Bright and early Wednesday morning my friend Aurelia arrived. I took her to the lab with me, and she kept me company while I fought with the machine till it would pass a performance report, then, while it ran an experiment we went to Gammelstad for a quick look around, and lunch at the cafe. Then back to work to shut down the machine and get the data before heading home to cook food (Västerbottensostpaj, raspberry-almond tartletts, and flatbread), and then pack for the event.
Thursday morning was more packing, and we went out to site just after 14:30. Since we have only had the new configuration of the sunshade up for one event (Cudgel War last August) I didn’t have clear memories of how it should go when we started putting it up, but, luckily, David remembered far more than I did, and as soon as we started putting it up, it all came back to me. It was a bit of a challenge doing it in the wind, but we got it and the pavilion up, and then had some hours to be social before I got too tired to stay up, and went to bed way early (21:30), clearly I had stayed up way too late the night before Aurelia arrived.
Luckily, getting the extra sleep Thursday night meant that I had plenty of energy on Friday, so after a nice morning hanging out with people, working on a sewing project, and teaching a couple of people nålbindning,I then sat down to carve on the soapstone pot I started last summer and didn’t manage to finish before the snow flew (and didn’t want to work on in the house, nor yet in the shop, since rock dust gets everywhere if you let it). I managed to do 5 hours and 35 minutes of carving that day, in four sessions (ranging in length from 5 minutes to three hours), and by the end of the event the pot was starting to look like it will one day be round, once I finish removing corners
I made it to bed just after 01:00 Friday night, and woke at just after 07:00 on Saturday. Since breakfast wasn’t served till 08:00, that gave me time for a short walk around the island before food was ready (there are some lovely views across the river. Saturday was another lovely day of socialising, soapstone carving (5 sessions for me totalling only 3.5 hours of carving, plus another hour or two of Julia doing the carving), attending Aurelia’s interesting and well attended class on the Medieval uses for bodily fluids (she managed to cover all of them), and making use of the Sauna tent, including four of us running the rather long way to the river, and then across the rather wide shallow bit before we could immerse ourselves into the water (I also took a Sauna on Friday, but without the river excursion).
Sunday we broke camp and went home. Aurelia rode with Caroline and they picked up sushi on the way. Kjartan and I stayed on site a while after our camp was loaded into the cars to help with some of the site cleanup, and then joined them at the house to eat sushi. That was just the beginning of Auralia’s tourist adventures in Norrbotten, but I believe it was a highlight. She provided these photos: