So, one of the best benefits of friends who have produced daughters is the opportunity to make extra-cute items. It's not age-appropriate yet, but I could not resist making a little dolly for Miss M. I tried to document it, but while I can find references to little Norse children "playing house," I have not found a mention or example of a dolly. Oh well, you can't play house without a baby, so here she is: She's linen, stuffed with linen scarp, wool hair, linen embroidered features, linen tunic and dress, wool shawl, leather shoes, all items handsewn. There's a tin annular brooch and metal button "brooches." I made her to be one of the "awake on one side/sleepy on the other" dollies, with the little coif to cover the side not in use. This was actually a little ironic, since zarhooie was also working on a project for me that she just gave me at Border Down's Yuletide. Here's Miss M's dolly and Gelgeis chilling out on the couch. She has a linen under tunic, linen tunic, wool coat, wool braids, "amber" and glass necklaces, a handwoven tabletwoven belt, leather shoes, and a bag with a sewing kit and money purse filled with "gold" coins. Hee. So cute! Hurray for geeky dollies!

This weekend we held the Griffin Needle Challenge in Jararvellir and, now that I have slept a bit, I would like to offer a report and thanks. Apologies for any inaccuracies or omissions – some details doubtless have escaped me from tiredness…

 

We had nine teams compete in the Challenge. In the Intermediate category, we had the Handmaidens (and Huscarl) of Doom created a reproduction of the Skjoldeham find,the Flying Monkeys created an Italian gown, and the Byzantine Bobbins created their interpretation of Theodora’s outfit from the mosaic at Ravenna. In the Advanced category, Their Royal Highnesses’ Pleasure took on TWO outfits, making a gown and sideless surcoat for Her Highness and matching outfit for His Highness, and the House of Thornes sewed a German woman’s outfit. Lastly, in the Pyxis Division, Oni-Saru made a man’s Japanese outfit, G Force: Death, Dark, Blood made outfit including a coat and jupon _also_ for His Highness, Equestrians and Company created a Middle Eastern woman’s outfit, and Rusty Nails and Regular Beatings created a Pictish woman’s outfit.

 

There are already pictures up on Facebook and I am sure Shava will have hers up shortly.

 

First, I would like to thank my staff. Thanks to Shava and her staff who manned the gate and to the gate staff, Greta, Josceline and the others who acted as chatelaines as our presence garnered attention from all the hotel guests who came to Madison for the Badger’s Homecoming game and were surprised to find a sewing competition. Greatest thanks to Iohanna and her food-prep helpers - we were well fed all night and all day with tasty, nutritious, low-stain potential options and lots of munchies. Special thanks to the Judges – Ivan Matfeevich Rezansky, Robert the Stout, Roxelana Bramante, Cassandra of the Western Green, Marwen, and Niccolo Falconetto. In many ways, I think your jobs were the hardest! Lastly, thank you to all the competitors! This event, by definition, cannot happen without you. It was an exhausting, insane, AMAZING time and I hope you all had as good a time as I did!  

 

Oh, and while winning is not the point of the Challenge, the winner in each division is listed last in the above list. There were small prizes for the winners, but the real prize is the bragging rights, so congrats to Byzantine Bobbins, House of Thornes, and Rusty Nails and Regular Beatings!

 

For those of you who were unable to make it, you missed a wonderful event and a great display of the talents we have among us. Take a look at the pictures, talk to the folks who competed, and consider joining us next year!

 

Once again, thank you all… Now I’m off to sleep…

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It’s been a fortnight or more since I posted anything of consequence, so this is a general update-y post because it has been a busy few weeks.

 

On the last weekend of August, I traveled up to Windhaven with roxelana0com . They were hosting an Arts and Sciences Day - she was asked to teach C&I and I was asked to teach Research and Documentation. The class ran somewhat longer than it usually does, but there were a lot of questions and a lot of newer folks with a genuine interest in research. Squee!

 

When I got home, my mom came to visit, sadly not for a joyful reason. One of her best friends from college, the lady I was named after, in fact, had died rather suddenly. She had lived in McFarland, so my place was a good place to crash for the night before going to the funeral Monday morning. Unfortunately, I had a down-to-the-wire report to do at work, so I was not able to attend with her.

 

At the very end of the month, I found out at a particular Viking from Border Downs lost his job and so resolved to move to Madison. The loss of the job does not precisely please me, but I am looking forward to the relocation.

 

I am a spoiled girl and I have a ton of vacation, so when I realized that I could use 16 hours of PTO to avoid 18 hours of driving, I decided to go to Gimli, but then stay out in the West until Coronation. The original plan was to go out with TRM and return with TRM, but not the same people. ;) For a variety of reasons, I ended up coming back with cass_lee , though.

TRM dropped me off in Fargo and I joined missdoom and Mr S for the rest of the trip north. We stopped at the Hjemkomst Center since I’d never been there. It was neat to see the reconstruction of a Viking Ship that sailed to Norway in the 80’s but it was sort of disappointing to see all the modern stuff they left on the decks. And of course they wouldn’t let you get on board either. :P I actually liked the Viking Stave Church even better, I think. It was just gorgeous and I really wish we had geekage like that in Madison. Thanks in part to a fellow we met over the weekend, we are probably going to go up for the Viking weekend at the museum next June. Mmmmm… geeking en masse.

 

This was my first Gimli and it was a very good time… except for the mosquitos! Yipes! I swear they were swarming in the thousands! I didn’t really do much at the event other than hang out with folks and socialize and drink and sew. Granted, I did a lot of each of those! In all, a nice long weekend.

 

The week between Gimli and Coronation passed quickly, with sewing, a trip to Vermillion to pester Count Hagan for part of a project, sewing, a day up in Aberdeen, and more sewing. However, on the drive up to Fargo I discovered that even I have a limit and deciding to add 40’ of last-minute extra sewing was just too much for my shoulder. Hurray for back squishes, vitamin I, hot tubs, and Scotch!

 

Coronation went well and smoothly, at least as far as I could tell. sirzig and mightyjesse were safely installed as our next King and Queen and they were predictably adorable and squishy. The garb was done and looked pretty good. (All wool, silk, or linen, handsewn, hand embroidered, blah, blah, blah...) Thanks to the folks from Korsvag who wove all the trim on short notice! The weather was beautiful, if a tad too warm, but there was fighting to be had outdoors and all sorts of crafts indoors. I was a good little muffin and didn’t sew anything, but I did work a bit on an illumination that mysie drew and let me color. Yay! Coloring!

 

Saturday night there was much merrymaking and talking well into the night. It was a hard, hard thing to get up and leave early Sunday morning. cass_lee was merciful enough to allow me a waking-up waffle, but then we were on the road. I didn’t stay awake as much as I should have, largely due to the late night and the lack of homecoming project. Once back in Madison, we made a quick stop at my place, pitched out my stuff from the weekend, and then proceeded to Don G’s birthday party. Ooof. It was fun, but I didn’t even last until 10PM before I needed to bail and get to bed.

 

Luckily, I still had Monday off to recover. I also did a ton of laundry, cleaned the garage with devikat , had the Sears contractors over for an estimate and a guy over to tune the piano, so it was not a complete slacker day, but it was relaxing and ended with a lovely dinner with Blue.

 

Whew! Busy, but happy!

Ugh. What a day. Work crazies and brain weasels. The fun and games with Medicare are just... astounding. It's too exhausting to even try to explain the horrid issues. I tried restarting the day after work with a nap and a shower, but I'm still in a funk.

On the up side - I made a needle! It's an antler naalbinding needle.



Made a needle, made a needle, made a nee-eedle last night...

Of course, this means I'll find my original one tomorrow...

There really is just too much over Pennsic to do more than summarize the best parts of it.

We arrived very late on Friday night. It was dark and cold and wet. I made the executive decision that I would rather pay for a hotel room than try to set up in that. Hurray for one last night in a real bed!

I took two classes from Ragnveig Snorradottir - Viking Domestic Architecture and Denmark before Jellinge - they were both wonderful and I can highly recommend her as a teacher if you ever get out to Pennsic.

My classes were a smashing success! I had about 35-40 in my Pictish World class. The real winner was the Beautiful Rolled Hems class, though! I literally had eighty or more people show up! When I did the "magic" part of the stitch, the class went wild. The last row actually stood up and applauded... and the class next door came over to find out what the hell was going on. *grin* Since it was such a fast class, though, I snuck in a second class on whipcording for those that wanted to stay. (Spread the disease, spread the disease!) Even better, for the rest of the event,  I had random people scurry up to me to show me their just-completed projects. :) Happiness.

Revelation: People are willing to pay a reasonable amount for extensive handouts, provided they are quality handouts. Resolution: Must revise handouts so the Pictish World can have a freebie basic handout and an optional for-sale nice, fat illustrated packet . Nummy.

I finally got to meet judithsewstoo  in person. We geeked, the apprenti and I took her class, she gave me some tasty silk string and I gave her some feedback on her class.

Tuesday rocked. Waterbearing, classes, hanging out with the apprenti, fun in camp, the Northshield party, and a tipsy stumble home under starry skies. Splendid.

Apparently, I can corrupt people by osmosis - I got one of the Greyfox boys to start handsewing a linen tunic in camp. :) For some crazy reason, he wanted more than 3 shirts and asked for help picking out fabric, which I did... He looked disappointed that he would need to wash and dry it before he could do anything with it, but I then helpfully offered that I could show him how to cut it out of a piece of washed and dried linen that I just happened to have on site... I explained the stitches and the construction steps and offered to help him sew it, but by then he wanted to do it all himself. Hurray!

Further geeky fun - Bardic Bread around the fire and the "Greyfox A&S Pavilion" on our porch. :) It was too cold Wednesday night toget the bread to rise, but I baked over the fire on Thursday and Friday nights. Friday night I even got to try out a new yeast starter that was sent to me by one of the mercenary households. I only used about half, so now I have a little zoo on my countertop at home.

I took a very interesting and useful class about working on parchment and bought some calligraphy toys. I must talk to Gustov about some of what I learned/remembered.

The courts were full of twelve kinds of goodness. Congrats to everyone, especially our Draco Incarnates Leif and Astrid and to the geek-boys Duncan and Svein! :)

We made good time on the road home, got only moderately lost in Chicago, stayed mostly awake on I-90 (hurray for paying missed tolls online), and my traveling companion and I still liked each other when we got home. :)

Cool purchases: forged nails, pumice stones, soapstone for a viking lamp, jet beads, bone dice with ring-and-dot pips, and a giant silver button.

Best thing I learned: a completely stoopidly easy way of making circle/dot marks like are seen on so many early period artifacts. I can't believe it didn't ever occur to me, it was so obvious... Sometimes it's the simple things...

Best acquisition: A very nice mirror from Northstar Armories. I've wanted a period mirror for a long time but the ones I found were either ugly or not up to my standards in some way. This one is delicious in all ways and has a really spectacularly clear reflective side - most ot the metal mirors are a little on the fun-house mirror side. The mirror is modeled on the Trelan Bahow mirror, which is early even for me, but is essentially the same as those seen on the Pictish Symbol Stones. I found it after I spent my war budget, though, so I was foolishly waffling about it... but then Mr. Svein bought it for me as a War Prezzie. The first thing I did that night was sew a linen baggie to protect it. :)



See info on the mirror here and on general bronze age mirrors here.

Yay, War! Its good to be home, but I already miss it...

Real post later, but here is the geeky goodness...




( Authentic Encampment photos )

Viking baby bonnet

Line hat, handsewn with linen embroidery and whipcorded ties.



Baby clothes, whether made or purchased, are coated in crack and estrogen. Even fencingkitty  had the "Awwww..." response.

This and the tunic from yesterday's Thing go in the mail tomorrow as a tiny Viking outfit for a friend's spawn, expected next week.

Linen handsewn with linen thread, finished seams, and embellished with linen embroidery (running stitch, madder red) for a friend's soon-to-be newborn.

So... some of you are onraventhourne's LJ, but I'm posting this anyway because it is made of awesome.

A Silver Hoard created for Estrella A&S

And the delicious documentation.

Nom. NOM. NOM.

I am often cold and so have long lusted after goldfrog’s tasty wool Viking coat. I finally had a chance to make one of my own. I used my standard Pictish gown pattern, with a few little modifications: additional ease, a v-neckline, and a front split.

 

The wool is a gorgeous red-purple I have had on hand for some time and just never got around to using. When washed, it only shrunk a little, but fulled up nicely. I am not certain, but based on the descriptions I’ve read, I think it may be close to the highly-prized Irish red-purple. The black is remnants off a project so old I don’t remember what it was (maybe a cloak for corvusjoyous? whymc?). The whole garment is hand-sewn with silk thread in the construction and linen embroidery floss for the accent embroidery.

 

The front-fastening pin is purchased and modern-ish, but in a Viking design. I’ll look into upgrading at War. ;)

 

While I hate back-documenting, I realized partway through the project that there IS evidence that the Picts wore outerwear similar to Viking coats, a seen on this Pictish stone at the Meffan Institute.

 

 

My coat is lengthened from a man's short jacket to a woman's full coat, of course, and this is clearly still not great documentation, it's just that, while I am generally pretty comfortable with stealing from neighbor-cultures due to the limited information on Pictish clothing, this makes me feel somewhat better about the whole thing... Besides, while it will generally be worn with my Pictish finery, I think it completes the Viking look quite nicely. :)

Warning - apprentic brag - Of course, what REALLY completes the look are my sexy, sexy Coppergate socks that were a birthday present from the lovely and talented mightyjesse :

I have been interested in the A&S 50 challenge for some time and just needed some time to get off my duff and get started. The cliff notes version is that it is a challenge to complete 50 Art and/or Science items in a category before AS 50, with the categories being depth (50 of the same thing), breadth (50 different things), or persona (50 things your persona would have done/known/used). Some optional additional refinements that have been offered include attack_laurel's suggestion that the 50 things be made out of your current stash. I'm doing a persona challenge, but making it a broad Northern European challenge including Pictish, Dal Riadic, Northumbrian, and Viking items (and possibly some Anglo-Saxon), since there is a limited number of Pictish items that I can document well and I want to play with cooking and some other things where straight-up Pictish evidence is poor to non-existant. I'm making up for my lack of specificity with additional anal-retentiveness in construction and materials.

I didn't get everything done for this weekend like I had wanted, but I did get a start, so I'm beginning my reports.

#1 - Norse hat - handwoven wool diamond twill with a linen lining and real fur brim, entirely hand sewn and hand embellished with linen thread.
#2 - Pictish gown - linen dyed with onion skins as one of my Pennsic dyeing experiments, my Pictish pattern, hand sewn and hand embellished with linen thread.
#3 - Norse gown - wool tabby in a natural and madder/iron red, using the very flattering gored pattern (and example of which is found here),  hand sewn and hand embellished with linen thread.



The necklaces and chest-strands were either pre-existing or recently re-threaded necklaces of glass beads (many made for me by THL Moira ni Connell the Strongbow), amber, and copal. The earrings were made for me years ago by Cnut's man-at-arms Olav and, to my delight, I recently acquired a matching ring to replace the one I'd lost some time ago. Bracelets of silver and/or amber by other Northshield artisans, brooches kindly lent by goldfrog, and leather turn shoes completed the outfit.

I'm actually really very pleased by the outfit and just ordered some brooches of my own from Raymond's Quiet Press and I can't wait to finish the coat. As a bonus, I think I like the pigtail braids look and may need to start making a habit of that. :)

Twelfth Night was lovely, if crazy, crazy busy.

I got on site bright and early and hauled in my four tons of stuff. In addition to the Twelfth Night gifties and the ubiquitous linen, I also had stuff for the Laureling and the Seekrit Projekt. I had decided that, since swords_and_pens  had asked for help with a doublet pattern, I would use the pattern to make him a new suit of clothes. On site. The day of the elevation. Handsewn. :) I enlisted a number of competant, speedy sewers and felt that it would be tight, but that I was in pretty good shape.

Unfortunately, the tourneys got started a little late,  so by the time swords_and_pens  was put on vigil, I only had a few minutes to cut the first pieces of his outfit before the Laurel meeting started. By the time that was done, it was already 12:30 and court was scheduled for 4:30. Since many of the people who knew about the project were not able to make it to the event after all, I was a little short handed and didn't know if we could pull it off, but I decided to go for it anyway. Unfortunately, by 4PM, it was clear we were not going to make it, although we did get the doublet, sleeves, and pants all about halfway done. I'll finish them over the next few weeks and deliver it to him later... Not as spiff as getting Laureled in the outfit, but I think there were a solid dozen or more people who contributed to the project so they could have a special hand in it. I should have put out a Sweatshop Guest Book so I could keep track of all who contributed, but thank you to everyone who helped!

While I was terribly excited and enthusiastic about the Seekrit Projekt, I really should not do such things at events I already know are going to be busy. :P I never have enough time to hang out at these sorts of events and this year was no different. I didn't even LOOK at the raffle, beyond what I saw when I dropped off my contributions and only was in the fighting hall while looking for gate. :P My apologies if you wanted to chat and I was either short on time or missed you altogether.

Dinner out with folks from across the Kingdom was really nice, though. Heh. I am comfy enough in my garb that when we went to the Chinese buffet and some lady asked me about my costume, it took me a beat and a half to remember I was still in Viking. :P She thought it was neat, though, and was really amused at our "raid" of the buffet. I even had NEW garb (or at least some new pieces) for the event! I'll post more about it tomorrow, but I was amused that people apparently had difficulty recognizing me because of the hat, overdress, and/or colors I was wearing - I heard comments about some combination of  those factors all day long. Sadly, the wool caftan did not get completed, but I did make excellent progress on it over the weekend.

Sunday was a lovely raid on SR Harris and I got to assist a number of folks in their shopping but was really pretty conservative in my own purchases. I think ilaifire  owes me more for his pieces than I spent on myself. As a bonus, lovely, lovely C brought me a nifty campfire cookpot that she acquired on sale and I just can't wait to use... Sadly, I had to say goodbye all too soon to folks headed home and turn my own car east as well. :/ Visiting is so lovely and it is hard to part such good company...  At least I had mightyjesse to keep me company, since my original rider punked out on me. I may have not been the best company by the end of the ride, but it was an enjoyable, relaxing end to a packed and pleasant weekend.

So, I had a lovely, beautiful red Viking apron dress that I made a few years ago, primarily as a component of a Hel costume for Halloween, and I wanted to make a nice warm coat to go over it, much like the one goldfrog  wears. I even made a cute little "bumper" hat on Wednesday to complete the look. Hurray! Wooly and furry Viking warmth, right? Right!?!?!

...except that I made the dress a few years ago... as in before my costuming standards significantly improved. *sigh* The fabric is wrong, the color is wrong, the cut is wrong... it's awful. *pout*

On the other hand, that means I got motivated enough to cut some of my lovely Harris Tweed and I now have a mostly-finished apron dress in an iron-mordanted madder color cut according to better pattern. (Although this Tweed is a tabby, not a twill - horrors!) Tomorrow will be some minor fitting/seam completion, hemming, and hopefully seam decoration. THEN I can start thinking about that coat...  



(General note: Yes, I'm a freak about my clothing. I know. I don't care if you're not... unless, of course, you're interested in seeing some research I have over here... ;P)

Bright and early on Friday morning, cass_lee  showed up at my house to head to Minot for Crown Tourney. I was even mostly ready, save feeding the birdies and collecting my electronics that had been charging overnight. Sadly, I did NOT have the car packed to the gills with linen - the order never came! I contacted the warehouse today and should have an answer soon. Once hopes they do not simply misplace 500 yards of linen! I managed to be good company for a few hours before getting a little nap. I am not a morning person and early morning car ride = sleepy Eithni. The trip out was essentially unremarkable except for our stop at the Perkins of Fail. We stopped for dinner at Perkins in Jamestown, ND and discovered that their WiFi was defective, their ladies' room had plumbing issues, the waiter had SERIOUS B.O., and the roast beef was an iridescent green. Luckily, cass_lee  noticed before either of us had eaten much. (I'd had one piece, she'd had none.) The manager replaced the roast beef dinners with whatever we wanted - she ordered a pasta bowl, but they were temporarily out of the pot pies that were my second choice, so I ended up with a plate of fried mozzarella sticks for dinner. I figured something deep fried ought to be pretty safe and I'd been craving melty cheesy goodness anyway. We got into Minot around 9:30, got checked into the hotel, and then cass_lee  got ready for bed while I went to investigate whether there was any trouble to be gotten into. Sadly, we were at the Super 8 and most of the other folks were at the Holiday Inn, so there was no trouble to be had. My bedside lamp was bright enough cass_lee  could not sleep with it on, so I couldn't read in bed either, until I remembered that I had downloaded The Complete Works of William Shakespeare onto my dorkPhone. dorkPhone FTW! Somewhere around midnight I turned it off and went to sleep since we had to be up tragically early on Saturday.

Saturday indeed came early, but we had Perkins' muffins for breakfast and then headed out. Sadly, the MapQuest directions cass_lee  had downloaded bore no resemblance to reality and we ended up staring at some residential homes when it told us we were at our destination. dorkPhone again to the rescue! It got us to the site, but we did not immediately recognize it since, for some odd reason, the directions brought us to the back of the building. However, upon checking the name of the site, we quickly were able to recover and get inside. Then there was a flurry of prep work to complete, a run off-site for some essentials, and a quick polish of the crowns, which were in an appalling state. So, when morning court started, I was still in my mundanes, covered in metal polish and tarnish goo. Nummy. Oh well, His Majesty had been a big fat meanie and said I couldn't carry the axe anyway. ;P I quickly got cleaned up, dressed, and was on hand by the time any run-and-fetch-it services were needed, so we were just fine. I don't think I missed more than the Fealties, anyway. After the presentations, I spent a little time schmoozing with folks, delivering the items I had to give/return to folks, and apologizing to the folks who were expecting linen. Luckily, only one person from the West had ordered linen, so I'll send her share via SCA mail at some point (probably Rythym and Bruise) and the rest of the folks will be at or have representatives at Clothiers.

Then I checked in with cass_lee  and when she did not require any immediate assistance, set up my Evil Web. I was gratified to catch my first victi... er... student quite quickly and then spent the rest of the day teaching a series of people how to do whipcording. There were even a few people who asked about it after I had cut down my web and I simply sent home with a kit, but now there is an online tutorial for folks to use, even if they have not gotten an in-person lesson! Squee! Geekage! The rest of the day, except for an unfortunate interlude, was happily spent schmoozing, geeking, and trying to help out.

But, back to the purpose of the day! My attention was not on all of the bouts, especially the early ones or the ones when I had a shiny new student, but I did try to pay attention if Roisin or Stephen were fighting. As we got toward the end, I yielded to more geeky impulses and posted updates on the Northshield and Jara Halls from the dorkPhone. Therefore, I was able to announce the results of the finals before the crowns were on TRH's heads. :) Vivant to TRH Stephen and Ailleanne! It will be a busy year in Jara!

One of my most important tasks of the event was to make a presentation in Court. My lovely and wonderful foster-apprentice mightyjesse  had worked on a few projects for goldfrog  but could not be at the event and could not wait to have them presented. TRM's allowed me into court, giant grin and all, and I explained that as a Laurel, I felt I should teach my apprenti to support the Kingdom with their Arts - whereupon I happily presented goldfrog  with a bar of homemade soap that mightyjesse  made, including a wool baggie to be used as an abrasive scrubby. (The joke here being that goldfrog gets her own weight in soap over the course of a reign and really doesn't need another bar.) goldfrog  was gracious, but suspicious, since she knows that I am full aware of the volume of soap she recieves, so I continued to explain that, while a Queen is rarely stinky, she very often needs to be clothed, and presented the Viking gown I had concealed behind my back under my brat. *grin* The splendidness of mightyjesse 's work was displayed and I explained to the crowd that the dress was handsewn and hand embellished with linen, that that fabric itself was handwoven and the weft handspun. The crowd and HrRM were suitably impressed. :)




There are more photos of the presentation on the Northshield Gallery or at mightyjesse 's entry.

After all the meetings and court, the idea was that I would find some folks to go out to dinner with while feast went on, since I did not get feast. As it was, the couch in the Royalty Room was calling my name and I had a little nappy-nap instead. After feast, we packed up TRM's stuff, Roisin threw some of her stuff into my car, and I took cass_lee  back to the hotel. She was beat, but I, feeling better after my nap, went out to the Holiday Inn to postrevel. I had misunderstood the location of the hotel - I thought I had seen the State Fair Grounds on the way into town, but I had actually seen the State Fair OFFICES, with no Holiday Inn in sight. So I stopped by the site again to get better directions, which were indeed obtained, but then had the everliving crap scared out of me as I tried to leave. You know how when you reach for a door and it suddenly swings open just as your hand should hit it and you are surprised when there is someone there? Now imagine being a little on the tired side and it being a back-lit ingusmoen  on the other side of the door. Yipes! ;) It was funny as soon as my heart stopped going 4,000 beats per minute!

The Postrevel was good. Very good, actually. :) I had brought a bottle of good Scotch, I got to spend casual time with TRM, I got to hang out with a lot of my favorite people (including some I see quite rarely), I got to engage in some truly geeky conversations about the Picts and assorted other research topics, and otherwise had a jolly good time. There was a little bit of mystifying drama at the end of the night too, but overall, the postrevel was, I think, a splendid win. We'll see what comes of the various conversations and contacts, but - if nothing else - I think there will be good fun and geeking as a dividend.

Sunday came altogether too soon, even though I was in bed and sleep at a reasonably respectable hour, cass_lee  wanted to leave early and we did, but we fought snow and wind and other yuck for much of North Dakota. Minnesota was better and by the time we crossed the Wisconsin state border, the weather was downright lovely. The colors of the fall foliage and the nice warm breezes were a welcome change from the sleet and dark we left in Minot. :P

Monday, by some happy accident, I had off from work. I usually do not work Fridays, but my coworker needed this Friday off, so I offered to trade. I got a recovery day, she got her needed day off, we both got a four day weekend - wins all around! I spent the day sleeping in, reading in bed, taking an appallingly long shower, reading in bed, sewing my mom's Christmas present (which took entirely longer than it ought to have, ugh!), catching up on email, watching the Daily Show/Colbert Report, posting here, and soon I'll be to bed for one last round of reading in bed before going to sleep at a decent hour.

A very long, but lovely four days! 

I want one!

http://www.havhingsten.dk/index.php?id=446&L=0

You silly late period folk - pirates were soft! Real seafaring is seventy men in an open boat and to know the smell of salt sea and damp wool with peatsmoke rolling off the shore... mmm... happy dreams for me...