Nik's Saga

Today was the last day at work for a month. I'm free!!!

Naturally my thoughts are now turning to my forthcoming visit to the UK. Well, visits plural really; July is the main one but then there's Raglan in August. I've been looking at relatively low-cost ways of doing things, as the krona is depressingly and patherically weak right now - about 50% of its value when I came over here. Which is massively frustrating given that I have what should be a reasonably-paid job... or it would be if the Independence Party and friends hadn't destroyed the Icelandic economy.

I'll be staying at the caravan for most of the first visit, although I've got all of the weekends filled in already including an SCA event and the Satellite 2 convention. I wasn't early enough to book into the con hotel but as it turns out that was a Good Thing - I could get a room at the same hotel for £21 less than the con special price by going to www.laterooms.com. Even so, I've opted for the Campanile just down the road at almost half the price of the con hotel.

The hotel issue extends into my planning for Raglan. Normally I'd stay at the Beaufort Arms in the village, but it has occurred to me that it would be considerably cheaper to buy a tent and all of the necessary paraphenalia to camp on-site than to stay in the hotel for 4 nights. The big issue would be storage between events - not a problem if I can get back to the UK for good relatively soon, but more of a problem if I have to cart it to and from Iceland with me. This is something I'll have to investigate further.

For now, though, I have a few days here to summer-clean the house before I leave. I have my little list, and I've started to work through it.
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... Mythgardia!

Remember that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I had made my first foray into venture capitalism? Well things are now beginning to come together. The project was a new board game by my great friend Bob Harris, the designer of Talisman. It was originally due to be published by Games Workshop as the official sequel to Talisman but eventually the rights reverted back to Bob and so he's now independently publishing it through the Mythgardia website.

I've played the original version of this a number of time (when it was known as 'Legends') and it is a fun game. Naturally I've got my copy ordered already, and I'm looking forward to a number of evenings of play in the near future. One of the big advantages I can see about Bob publishing it himself is that this way we'll get the original designers' rules, rather than the screwed-up-by-Games-Workshop rules. Yes, a lot of the gameplay issues with Talisman were due to GW rules tweaks. If you implemented the logical house rules for Talisman then you were probably playing closer to the original ruleset.

And no, I'm not getting commission for this. Assuming that Bob manages to sell the first 100 limited edition sets I'll make a small profit. Which will be offset by the cost of buying a copy myself, I'm pretty certain of that. But the profit isn't the point - the point is that it's getting a game that I enjoyed to a larger market. With a side-effect of me getting a copy of it myself. :)
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I've completed another batch of backlog scrolls.

I got a bit carried away this time looking for alternatives to my previous 'standard' versal, and as I went through the set the scrolls became more and more complicated - to the extent that I could probably have completed three of the 'standard' scrolls in the time it took me to do each of the three with the floral borders.

For the first time I had a go at doing a pair of scrolls for a couple. Actually it's a set of three for a couple and their daughter, but I did the third deliberately similar-but-different to highlight that although she's in the family she's an individual in her own right. Here are the pair:



The complete set is in the usual gallery. It was also the first time I've tried that particular type of border, and I'm quite pleased with it. I've also created a set of templates for drawing circles, shields and so on for badges, which helps with the consistency. Now all I have to do is to parcel them up and stick them in the post on Monday.
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I'm back on my sofa once more.

It's been a long few days, including over a thousand miles of driving. Thankfully not all on the same day. It's strange, although it's a long set of drives I'd forgotten that it would top the thousand when added together. That's the problem of living on a large island without any 'normal' trans-island roads. Such roads do exist, but they should only be attempted with a modified jeep, experience in off-road driving and plenty of driving chuztpah. It would work as a Top Gear race - one of them goes around the ring road, the other goes across the interior. :)

Here's the day-by-day breakdown:

Wednesday We had to get an early start as I expected it to be a rather long day - Egilsstaðir in the east to Eyrabakki in the south west, via the iceberg lake at Jókulsárlón. The lake was full to overflowing with icebergs, so much so that the amphibious tour of the lake kept its water-bourne segment to the edge of the lake rather than sailing in amongst the icebergs themselves, which was a little disappointing. There were, however, waffles and cream to make up for this, and E seemed to be quite enchanted by the whole thing.

Then it was back into the car to continue west, stopping only at Lanfskalavaroa to put another stone on one of the many piles of stones there. I successfully idenified the pile with the rock I'd placed last year; hint - bring an easily-identifiable rock, such as a water- (most likely glacier-) smoothed dark red one with white spots... I think it's a porphyritic rhyolite but I can't find my book on Icelandic rocks and minerals to confirm that. This year's rock was a larger chunk of scoria from near Dimmuborgir.

We finally made it to the hostel at Eyrarbakki about 9.5 hours after leaving Egilsstaðir, which wasn't bad at all given the two stops. The 'hostel' turned out to be a set of four apartments, each of which had a twin bedroom and a double sofa bed for a very reasonable fee. Sufficiently reasonable that if a group of us decide to do a planning weekend close to Þingvellir for one of our projects then a couple of these would be a definite possibility.

Thursday This was a much more relaxed start to the day, as we only had to get about 110km from Eyrarbakki to Keflavík. We did take the scenic route, via Kerið, Geysir, Gulfoss and Þingvellir. Yes, we did the classic Golden Circle tour, but added Álfubrúin, the bridge spanning the Álfagja rift in the far south west. This is the 'bridge between the continents', with one side on the North American plate and the other on the European plate. Except that the rift zone is actually about 30km wide... but that wouldn't play well with the tourists. :) The local authorities do seem to have improved the access though - it now has readable signage so it was fairly easy to find, unlike my last visit.

We stayed in the Njarðvík hostel where P and I had spent a couple of nights last year. E had been reading the description in the brochure and was looking forward to relaxing in the hostel's hot pot but unfortunately it wasn't working. It was also raining by that point, and E did admit that she wasn't too sure about the idea of hot-potting in the rain.

Friday Having done huge amounts of nature stuff over the past few days this morning left us just enough time to do the Saga Museum. They let me in there for free now, as this was my 6th visit, and most of the time I'm bringing other people in to visit the place. My interest is normally the shop where, as usual, I picked up some more beads to go the the hypothetical hangarok (although that might actually get done next weekend... not holding my breath on it just in case) and a bronze valkure to hang between the beads. Then there were Belgian waffles. We were at Perlan; Belgian waffles are obligatory. :)

Then it was back to the airport to drop E off to catch her flight. I think she had a pretty good time over here. I then took advantage of being in the capital to meet up with M for coffee and to pay a visit to the big blue shed in search of a new breadknife (we'd accidentally left mine in Eyrarbakki) and some more glasses to be engraved. The glasses were there but there were no breadknives, unfortunately. Instead I picked up some jars that will work nicely to store the component spices for garam masala.

The journey up north was looooong. Probably because I found myself stuck behind a series of tractors, tractors towing trailers, cars towing trailers, cars towing caravans, cars towing camper-trailers, and even camper-vans. It was well over an hour longer than anticipated, but I guess that's what you get for driving on a Friday afternoon.

Eventually I arrived home, extracted (and opened) one of my two remaining bottles of real cider from the fridge and crashed on the sofa. There seems to have been a death while I was away. I wonder if anything else happened on the planet?
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That's two journeys, two days, two puffins, two rainbows and two blue whales.

E's gap year visit to Iceland continued yesterday with a shortened tour of the north. Shortened by the requirement for me to attend what turned out to be a pretty ineffectual meeting in work in the morning, with the knock-on effect that we didn't get back until dawn (that's about 01:30 at present). Fortunately I could do the rest of the tour today as we headed out to Egilsstaðir to stay with B overnight.

After lunch at Bláa Kannan, where they had the most delicious pineapple cake, we headed off for Húsavík in time for the late afternoon whale-watching trip. The reports on the website over the last couple of days had suggested that there were a lot of whales in the bay so we started off in high hopes. We then spent about two hours pottering around the bay seeing nothing more than a couple of puffins, a dozen or so gulls and an (admittedly spectacular) double rainbow. The crew were clearly getting a bit worried, as if you don't see any whales on a given trip then they give you a voucher for a free trip at some point in the future.

Just as we were giving up hope the cry came from the lookout that there was a whale spout on the horizon. This was, in my view, exceptionally good news, as I hadn't seen any spouting whales before now so it had to be a new species for me. This turned out to be not one but two blue whales quite a distance a way. It was the distance that made me realise just how large these creatures are - from our vantage point on the boat several hundred metres away they still looked big. Close up they would have been twice the length of the boat upon which we stood.

Unfortunately we didn't have much time to follow them as the boat was needed for a final tour that evening, so we headed back to the harbour at full speed. By now it was past 20:00 and we were feeling decidedly peckish so it was off to Gamli Baukar for deep-fried (but not battered) cod with salad and mashed potatoes before heading south to Jorðböðin at Mývatn. While E was quite excited by the whale-watching trip, she was utterly captivated by the geothermal pool. It was quite tricky to coax her out at 23:20 before the horde extricated themselves from the combination of hot water and cold beer at 23:30. Naturally we had to complete the entire bathing experience with the traditional ice-cream (caramel Magnum, in my case) before the hour and a half drive back to the house.

With an 01:30 arrival it was probably a good thing that we'd planned a slightly later start this morning, simply hoping to be on the road by 10:30. We succeeded in this, and by that point had made it as far as the Christmas House, another place of great amusement and delight. Today we could catch up on all of the things I'd missed out yesterday, like Goðafoss, Dimmuborgir and Námafjall, and E was suitably impressed with all three.

Then there was just the couple of hours driving from Mývatn to Egilsstaðir in the east. Route 1 through the highlands is okay, but then there's the Corner From Hell and then the seemingly-endless drive down the valley to the town. It's not one of my favourite drives but the prospect of B's apartment at the end of it kept me going, and we arrived in good time for once.

It's now ridiculously early to go to bed but I'm planning just that, given that we've got what is probably going to be a 12-hour journey to the hostel at Eyrarbakki for tomorrow night. I tried to get us into somewhere a bit closer but for some reason they all seem full at present. :) The only closer hostel can only be accessed by experienced drivers in modified 4x4s... and while the yeti has been appropriately modded my driving hasn't. I could probably do it, but the car isn't mine and I have a passenger so I'm not going to take any chances.
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Today is midsummer, and I celebrated it in quite an unusual way.

The original plan for the day was for E, Ö (one of the fencers) and myself to do the tour of the north. Yesterday, though, Ö arrived and invited us to join him at the midsummer blót this evening with other local Ásatrúar in the woods at Kjarnaskogur.

Ásatrú is the modern interpretation of the Norse religion and is a recognised and respected religion here in Iceland. The focus is, Ö tells me, upon living in a manner in accordance with the sayings of Hávamál as well as revering the spirits and the old gods.

We met at one of the car parks in the woods and then went in search of the great wooden sundial somewhere up on the high ground. It turned out that, of course, we'd parked in the furthest car park from the site, and that there was one almost directly next to it, although that required taking a different turning. Mind you, now that I know that the turning is there I'll probably go up there again myself to get some photos and then bore you all with a more detailed description and musings upon the astronomical alignments of this place (which made me think of Woodhenge rather than Stonehenge, but more of that in a later post once I've been back with a compass to check the alignments).

There were about 15 people at the blót including the goði and gyða, who'd come up from Reykjavík; they apologised for the lack of activity up north recently but suggested the group's FaceBook group as an excellent way of keeping in touch. Ah, how the Internet pervades everything... :)

The ceremony itself was short - about 10 minutes - and began with the lighting of a fire (in a barbecue brought along for the purpose) followed by an invocation to the sun and and the blessing of the contents of a drinking horn with a rather nice twisted iron oath-ring. Then came the offerings to Oðin, Þór, Freyr, Freyja and the Earth Mother, each of which was poured onto the ground before the fire. Finally the horn was passed around all present to drink to the gods or to individual deities of their choice.

The three of us then celebrated further with ice-cream at the Big Bridge Burger Bar. Other folk from the blót arrived shortly after and celebrated with burgers. :) It was definitely an interesting thing to attend, the more so that it was held in Old Norse, spoken slowly and clearly, and surprisingly easier to understand than modern Icelandic. I actually managed to follow much of what the goði was saying, which added to the sense of the event.

It was a very interesting experience, even for an atheist like me. I found myself remembering Gytha, and the passing round of the mead-horn at Brighthelm events. But it was a remembrance of happiness, which was good.
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That's Rick Stein's rhubarb crumble.

Last Saturday I was indulging in one of my guilty pleasures - Saturday Morning Kitchen - when up popped Rick Stein cooking rhubarb crumble. As it happens, I have a rather large rhubarb patch in the garden her, and I'd quite fond of rhubarb crumble, so I paid him a little more attention than I might have for another recipe (I normally watch/listen to the programme while doing something else, like calligraphy or embroidery). His recipe was a new approach; rather than stew the rhubarb first, simply chop it up and put it in the bottom of a dish, add sugar to taste and a little flour to thicken the eventual fruit mixture, then cover with crumble mixture. That, I thought, would be a nice easy thing to try at some point.

'Some point' came today. This afternoon some of the shire came over for sausage-making, fencing and dinner. There was also supposed to be some gaming thrown in there but things started about three hours later than planned and sausage-making is not a quick task. We worked out that it takes six people to make a link of sausages - one to hold the stuffer, one to pay out the sausage skin, one to turn the stuffer's handle, one to add sausage mixture to the stuffer, one to force the mixture in the stuffer down into its depths and one to take the length of sausage created and twist it into triple-links of sausage (which was my job). I know it can be done with two people but it's so much easier, if not necessarily more efficient, to do it with six.

Before we got our hands messy with the sausages, though, we had a preparatory chocolate raisin muffin. E made these, baking chocolate muffins that contained chocolate-coated raisins (as opposed to chocolate chunks) and were covered with more chocolate. Mnom indeed.

Dinner was a variation on my standard chicken and leek soup - this time we added eggs to it in an attempt to get the nice thin strings of egg that you sometimes get in chinese soups. The extra protein was especially welcome after an hour or so of fencing. This was followed by the rhubarb crumble and custard. On a 'filling' rating of 1-10 this scored a 9. I'd put a little two much sugar on the rhubarb so it wasn't as tart as I prefer it but that made it a little more suited to the taste of my Icelandic friends. It was a big success, and I doubt that I'll evergo back to stewing rhubarb after that.

There's some left, which I suspect we'll have for breakfast tomorrow. Although I don't think I'll do custard with it. I just happen to have a carton of cream in the fridge, and I'm sure that would be far more suitable for breakfast.
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It was upper body workout tonight. My shoulders ache.

For that matter, my arms ache too, more than normal. Perhaps I should have passed on the workout tonight given my oomphlessness but I'm trying to stick with the 5-day-a-week schedule it's suggesting.

I managed to make it into work this morning. Not only that, I actually got some useful work done, in that I re-structured next semester's HCI module, re-arranging the order of the lectures so that they fit more neatly with the highly structured lab work. It's also allowed me to highlight which lectures I could replace to make it more interesting, but I'm still unsure how much to change it given that this will be the last time that it's going to be taught here and I think it would be a bit unfair to make large changes now when the students won't have a chance to resit the module the following year if it all goes horribly wrong for them.

After a quick snooze and another spot of cleaning (the house Dyson is not very good; my cheap and cheerful little vacuum is better so I'm wondering what the owners have managed to do to the Dyson) I went up to the airport to collect E. She's the daughter of some friends near St. Andrews and is just finishing off her gap year before going up to Cambridge to read modern languages. The chance to visit Iceland was just too much to pass up so she's over here with me for a week. There will be a lot more driving going on.

In the meantime, though, I think it's time for bed.
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I've been feeling quite up and down recently.

Take Tuesday. I came in from work feeling pretty lousy and fell asleep almost immediately. Then yesterday I felt fine - sufficiently fine that I got quite a lot done. But this morning I woke up feeling rotten again and haven't really had any oomph today either. I've just done my 15-minute workout, which generally leaves me feeling rather good - and indeed I felt better for a couple of minutes after completing it - but now I'm back to feeling ill again.

Between feeling grotty and having to deal with the lack of Internet I ended up staying at home today (it'll make up for work eating last Saturday). I phoned the ISP just after 8 and got the answerphone. Just after 9 I got hold of a human being whose response when I told him that the DSL was out was "you live in Eyjafjarðsveit, right?". It turns out that there was some wind and a resulting problem with the electricity supply which messed up all of the DSL links in the valley. He took my number and said that someone (R, the American chap) would call me back later to deal with it. I wasn't too unhappy at this as I wasn't feeling good anyway.

Instead, then, I decided to do something fairly sedentary while I waited and got started on the illumination part of the backlog scrolls (I finished the calligraphy last night). I must remember to start the next batch with words other than 'let', as I've had a lot of the letter 'L' to illuminate.

There was no phone call, but at about noon the DSL suddenly came back up. Hurrah! I was connected to the world once more!. This was particularly well-timed as I needed to check some illumination stuff. :) I'd completed the first group of relatively simple versals and had come up against the rather more complex border I had planned for the second group. I've not done a border like this before so I needed to find a couple of examples just to be sure that I wasn't doing something horribly wrong. It's looking pretty good so far, and with a bit of luck I might finish it tomorrow.

I have to go into town and into the office tomorrow, no matter how I feel. I might not manage a full day though unless I feel a lot better than I do right now. Time for plenty of liquids and bed, I think.
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Sorry for the silence - I've got connectivity issues again. I think that my DSL line went down on Monday evening. I say 'think' because I didn't actually have my laptop at home then to check. I'd taken it into work for a meeting and then left it in the meeting room. Silly me.

So when I got it back home last night I opened it up and discovered that the DSL had gone. Of course I found this just after the helpline closed on the day before a national holiday (one of Iceland's two Independence Days). Bah. So no helpline until tomorrow morning.

Still, as is usual for these mid-week days off I've managed to be pretty productive - tidying, lunch and a natter with B, calligraphy, a couple of loads of washing and a completed embroidered card. I had planned to change a light bulb in the car but don't have the right size tool; I have instead identified this as a problem and can go into town tomorrow to acquire the right sized tool and continue from there.

I still want to get the last of the calligraphy out of the way today so that I've just got the illumination to do, then I'll be happy with the day's progress.


Sent með Blackberry frá Vodafone
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I finished the dragon.



Technically this counts as backlog scroll #22 in that it's the 22nd backlog scroll that I've completed. Having said that, I've done the calligraphy for 7 more and just have to do the illumination on these, and then have another 2 to start. All being well I'll be able to send this batch of 11 off before I head back to the UK at the start of July. Although I suppose I could bring them back with me and post them in the UK. I'll have to think about that one.

Actually I think I preferred it unpainted. I'm not happy with the fact that the colours look terribly flat to me. And I should have made the knotwork 'thread' broader, I think. Unfortunately there's nowhere in Akureyri that offers classes in Practical Celtic Art taught in English (surprise surprise) and I really could do with doing a few art classes. It has occurred to me to take an art course - I haven't done any art classes since I specialised in sciences at school - but that's something else that will have to wait until I get back to an English-speaking country long-term.

Oh yes - the fact that it looks like a dog's face is entirely accidental. Oops! :)
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Or what passes for them here.

Today was, of course, graduation. The annual event that sees some of the more amusing crimes against style (although probably not fashion) visible in Iceland today. I had seven students graduating, and thankfully all of them dressed like civilised human beings. :)

I've just looked up my entry for this time last year:

To keep myself amused during the speeches I can't follow I've taken to noting the changes in fashions worn by the graduands. Last year it was big bold prints in bright colours; this year it's black and white (possibly with more restrained prints) or plain bright colours. Dresses are commonly either shoestring, strapless or even backless, with puffball or asymmetric hems. Boleros, even over dresses with sleeves, were also common. One or two that didn't conform to this pattern did look a bit like costumes from a seventies SF movie, although there was also a rather nice red belted t-tunic. Only four of the graduands wore traditional dress - a long black kirtle with embroidered bodice seams and front panels and a long apron (often patterned) over a plain white blouse, plus a black skullcap hat with a very long dangling tassle. The overall standard was higher than last year, although the number in traditional wear has halved.

Not a lot has changed, fashion-wise, although the shoestring and backless dresses have gone. At times it was a little like Buck Rogers in the 25th Century meets Ashes to Ashes, and the number of girls in national dress has again halved, but the plain colours were out in force. The worst-dressed-sentient-being-of-the-day award goes to the chap who wore black tie with bright red baseball pumps. And I won't go into the number of girls who were, ah, a little too ample for their stick insect dresses. Take it from me, ladies, tight fitting dresses do not flatter anyone with more than the most minimal curves.

After graduation and the traditional following photocall I went up to the office to write my presentation for Monday's faculty meeting. This killed two birds with one stone, though, as it allowed me to kill the time between graduation and A's graduation party in a manner more useful than driving home and then driving back. The party was a big family and friends affair, which was nice, and I finally got to meet A's grandmother, who is the woman who dyed and spun the wonderful embroidery wool that A gave me a while ago. I've yet to decide what to do with it, as I really must do something worthy of the skill that has gone into the dyeing and spinning. My current thought is to use it to embroider the edges of my hangerok once I get around to making the thing.

That covers 'excitement' and 'really wild things' but not 'adventure'. Well, on my way back to the office from coffee with a friend yesterday (it made more sense to do a couple of hours of extra work before the graduation rehearsal than to go home and back again) I noticed that there is a new Bónus supermarket in Akureyri, on the opposite side of town to the original one. It's a bit smaller and somewhat quieter than the main one, which is a good thing from my point of view. So today I decided to explore this, mainly in search of some detergent so that I can do essential things like wash my fencing armour (it got rather dirty last weekend). I think I might use start using that one as it's closer to the route home than the other one.

For now, though, I'm going to go and do a bit more work on the knotwork dragon. I think I've got the main body sorted, and I'm working on the other fill bits. Pictures will follow eventually.
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I'm spending a lot of time playing with knotwork.

One of the backlog scrolls I'm working on is a Lindquistring, the badge of which is a dragon coiled into a ring holding a jewel. It occurred to me that it should be possible to do this as a Book of Kells/Book of Durrow/Lindisfarne Gospels style knotwork beastie. I've got one full sketch done but I'm not too keen on the dragon's body, so I'm thinking of trying another one as a pure knotwork ring with a section cut out to hold the dragon's head, feet and gem. I hope to get it done this weekend once I've got over the formalities of graduation tomorrow morning.

We had the rehearsal for that this evening; I'm handing out the certificates for computing, as usual. I was greatly amused to see a number of the girls wearing 'dress' shoes but carrying their trainers - clearly they had decided that either the shoes needed breaking in or that they needed to make sure that they could manage the steps to and from the stage without falling over. My other service was to pronounce the non-Icelandic graduates' names (we have three of them - Chinese, German and Russian) so that my colleague who is reading out the list of graduates could write them down phonetically.

I've got to be down at the sports hall at 10:00 tomorrow morning ready for the ceremony to begin at 10:30, so I think that at the very least a magazine will be necessary for that half hour. A copy of New Scientist should do nicely, I think.
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I wonder what sort of flour was in that box?

It's a little bit strange; the first few times I used the breadmaker I was working my way through the flour in the flour box and had no idea what sort of flour it actually was. It worked beautifully. Then, the box being empty, I went out and bought 'bread flour' from Netto and the three loaves I've baked since then have all needed more flour after the first rising because rather than being a dough they've still been a liquid. The result was a load that had a more crumbly consistency than normal - a bit like the tall thin Scottish loaves you can get in supermarkets in, er, Scotland.

I might try just increasing the amount of flour. Or, I suppose, decreasing the amount of liquid. It's one of those recipes that is all done in cups rather than by weight, so I'm using the measuring jug for everything.

Okay, it has just beeped again, and this time it has come together properly. Fingers are crossed, and if it works I'll make a note in the recipe book to add another half cup of flour.
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Owww....

My body is still trying to catch up after the week's driving. The left hip is being a bit grumpy and I got home from work today, sat down on the sofa and then woke up an hour later. I also have a marvellous triple bruise on my left upper arm; upon investigating the cause the other night it became obvious that it was due to my fencing epee too much. Rotating the hand and using the quillions to catch the blade (as done with a heavy blade) is not possible with an epee so I have to do a slower parry... and then when I was using the heavier blade I was automatically trying to use the epee moves. Bah. And while I'm at it, Memo to Self: it is not enough to be safe with a buckler, you've got to learn to use it effectively as well.

For now, though, I think that last night's early night is now long overdue.
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Or the wings and the fangs and the eating of the eyeballs.

I'm finally back at home again after a week in which I've driven 1600 miles, visited a number of touristy places and heralded a Viceregal Court. Yes, it's been busy even without attending a full SCA event.

On Sunday afternoon I went back to the site to collect our guests and take them out to the Green Lagoon. We happened to stop at another gift shop (and a supermarket) on the way at Reykjahlíð, which is sufficiently close to the water at Mývatn to be infested by midges. Icelandic midges are not like their Scottish cousins; they are much larger but don't bite very much. Nevertheless, they are rather annoying, and C was particularly plagued by the creatures. They were, according to him, giant monstrous beasts well known for the wings and the fangs and the eating of the eyeballs. This, naturally enough, became the phrase of the post-weekend. In spite of the lateness of the hour when we got back (we had burgers in Akureyri at 23:15-ish) we still managed to spend a couple of hours discussing (but not playing) an assortment of board, card and roleplaying games.

It was therefore not entirely surprising that we didn't get away as early as planned. Particularly since we'd decided to do a bit more fencing in the morning (making the most of having fencers around the place). The original plan was to pop into Akureyri for a final couple of items then head down to Reykjavík via Þingvellir, Geysir and Gullfoss but instead we made it as far as Borgarnes before deciding to give up and have dinner instead. There's a little Filipino restaurant in the town that does great lumpia. There was a slight delay on the way when we went over a speed bump a little too rapidly, causing the mass of luggage in the back to shift slightly. Then a hissing noise and the smell of WD40 began to emanate from the boot, requiring us to stop, wind down all of the windows and almost completely unpack the back to get at the can of WD40 sitting in the plastic box that holds the toolkit. Oops.

It was (again) midnight before we got to M's apartment and we opted for water instead of coffee, given that we were hoping for an early start. Hoping, but not actually achieving. The plan was to be ready for 9 with the fallback of being ready for 10 and the chance of getting to the Saga Museum and maybe something else before heading for the airport. It was quite impressive that we did actually succeed in most of this one, with the result that today I not only managed to order three times the required number of waffles but also took part in my first shield wall.

The waffles were at Perlan, of course. We'd gone to the Saga Museum because it does the potted history of Iceland for SCAdians and other persons of a historical bent, has the most SCAdian-friendly (if wildly expensive) gift shop and has waffles in the cafe on the fourth floor. Every time I visit the museum I pick up more beads (one day I will do the viking garb and I intend to have lots and lots of strings of beads between my tortoise brooches) and this time was no exception. M commented that one of the bead designs looked like eyeballs... which resulted in me making up a memory necklace for C consisting of beads representing the wings, the fangs, the eyeballs and the body. The only problem was that the two 'eyeballs' beads turned out to be different colours that looked the same under the dimmer light of the museum. Drat. Ah well, it was a fun concept all the same.

Naturally then there were waffles (and pizza). I'm sure that I only ordered one waffle (with strawberry jam and ice cream) but they delivered three. The team demolished them anyway, before we went in search of Íslendingur, the replica viking ship that was sailed from Iceland to New York. The boat himself used to be out in the open but has now been moved to a new purpose-built museum building. Best of all, you can actually go aboard the boat, which comes complete with the round wooden shields that had been hung off the gunwales. It was inevitable that these would be picked up, examined, hefted and so on. C&D have a photo of the five of us, three forming a shield wall and the other two behind.

Eventually it was time to finally head for the airport and many hugs of farewell. I think that again the Shire has made quite an impression on our visitors. :) After that I just had the 300-mile drive home. Overall, including two return trips to Keflavík and three days of various meanderings around the north I think I've done about 1600 miles in the last week. I think I'd quite like to sleep for the next week, but I have a meeting at 10:00 tomorrow in work. At least I can get an early night... except that it's almost 23:00 already. Oh bother. Better get to bed right away then.
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I'm having a quiet Sunday morning after a busy couple of days.

On Wednesday after work I drove down to Reykjavík to stay overnight with M before collecting our visitors for Revel in the Midnight Sun IV this weekend. Although I'm not actually attending the event it made much more sense for me to do this because a) flights are expensive and it's expensive enough for visitors to get onto the Rock, never mind then handle internal flights as well; b) I've got a job that's flexible enough for me to be able to take a few days off at present; and c) I have access to the largest car in the shire. I was sufficiently organised to have brought the iPod but insufficiently organised to remember the radio adapter for it. As 250 miles with no music (I can't handle Icelandic radio) did not appeal I ended up sitting the MacBook on the passenger seat and running iTunes. I was quite impressed at its battery, in that it had no problem lasting the whole 5-hour journey (max speed limit here is 55).

As I mentioned in the previous post, I then spent much of the evening making a heap of sheep. The 'tournament story' is based upon the Icelandic tradition of the réttir where all of the sheep that have been wandering the hills for the summer are brought down for the winter. Once they're down off the hills they're placed into a sorting pen and then split up between the different farmers. For the Klakavirki Sheep Raid tournament it is assumed that the raiders have stolen some sheep and are now deciding how to divide their spoils. There are a fixed number of sheep (about 250 in this case) and each fighter is trying to bring as many as possible home to their partner/inspiration. A fighter can challenge any other fighter and the winner gets a sheep. The overall victor is the one with the most sheep once all have been claimed. This becomes a tournament of skill, speed and stamina, in that the large number of sheep mean that it can go on for quite a long time, similar to the 9 Lives tournament at Raglan.

On Thursday morning I made up the corral for the sheep, then put together one of the Klakavirki kneeling cushions. It makes sense for us to have our own set of cushions (and of many other things) in order to minimise the amount of stuff that any visiting Royals/Viceregals need to carry in their luggage. Besides - they're a great way of displaying the group's heraldry. I'd drawn the original designs on the canvas then M and E had done the actual embroidery, so it was just a case of making up the cushions and putting the covers together. M had got a couple of quite large cushions so instead we decided to open up one of these and use the filling to stuff two much smaller kneeling cushions. The only problem was that the filling was feathers, not foam, which led me to a rather unpleasant asthma attack on my part. Still, I got them done and managed to make up one of the covers so we now have one cushion complete and another just to have its cover made up.

M and I then headed out to the airport to collect D, C & C, and actually managed to get all but one suitcase into the back of the yeti. This was a Good Thing, although it made me realise that it's not realistic for me to drive them back down on Monday and then head straight back up as M will never get all of the luggage plus passengers into her car to return them to the airport on Tuesday. It's a good thing I don't have any work meetings until Wednesday as it looks like it'll be Tuesday evening before I get back up north. :)

The journey up north seemed shorter thanks to having good company for it, although even so it was past 23:00 before we got home. We stopped on the way for dinner, which slowed things down, but normal people need to eat more often than I do. One highlight, though, was that we saw an arctic fox up on one of the heaths.

Friday was tourist day. We started off with Akureyri itself and wandered from gift shop to gift shop, with my visitors picking up an assortment of treasures and generally taking advantage of the exchange rate. Then, after a fuel-and-ice-cream stop at the Big Bridge Burger Bar (it's actually called Laerunesti, but I didn't discover that until I'd already given it a personal reference name) we headed off to do the tour of the north - Ljósavatn, Goðafoss (where C got wet feet trying to cross a set of rocks so as to get a better view of the top of the waterfall), Mývatn and Námafjall. We were finally heading up to site when I got a phone call to say that M wouldn't be there for an hour, so we also went up to Húsavík for a while (and another gift shop). When we finally arrived on site I was a bit surprised to discover that we could have gone straight there as the cook had been there all day.

I left our visitors at the event and came back home. As well as my lack of energy to handle an event, it turned out that there had been a bit of a cock-up with some scrolls that had been made up using the mundane names of the recipients. Fortunately they were on parchment (and are absolutely gorgeous) so I could scrape the names out and correct them. Unfortunately I didn't have fine enough glass paper to smoothe the surface properly so the names look rough compared to the rest of the scroll text but at least the names are now correct. It was very fortunate that I was the herald for Court and so this came to light in time to fix it. I suspect that part of the reason for the problem is that modern Icelandic names look just the same as Norse names of the SCA period, so it's very easy to get them confused. Still, we managed to get it fixed before Court.

Court was supposed to be at 18:00, but I got a phone call at 14:00 to say that things were running late (no surprise there) and that it wouldn't be until 20:00. I duly drove over to site for 19:30 to allow myself time to get changed and discuss any last-minute matters with C&D... and Court finally started at 21:00. Had things been running to time I'd planned to stay for the feast, but with the feast not starting until after 22:00 I didn't bother and got back home at about 23:30. Court itself went quite well, with A being made a companion of the Order of Ffraid, while two other members of the shire got their AoAs. I was, however, annoyed that one of the engraved wine goblets I'd done as gifts for our visitors didn't survive the journey to site in spite of the careful packaging. I shall just have to do a replacement for C and get it to him at Battle of Brothers or Raglan. At least it was a C that broke and not the D, or we couldn't have presented them to the V&V.

I've been taking it easy this morning, doing a bit of tidying up and watching the Grand Prix. I'm expecting a phone call at some point telling me when I should head out to collect our visitors, at which point I'll take them out to Jarðböðin at Mývatn for a post-event soak before coming back here overnight. Once I get the timing I can pop into town on the way out to get a little shopping, as I'm almost out of milk and could do with a few more things for breakfast tomorrow.
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This must be one of the strangest SCA-related things I've done yet.

This weekend is Revel in the Midnight Sun IV, and although I'm probably not going to be around for most of it, I have been rather involved with the immediately pre-event organisation. Which is why I'm currently in Reykjavik, ready to collect our visitors tomorrow and to drive them up north for a bit of sightseeing before taking them up to the site.

We were planning to have a Rose Tourney at the event... until we realised how much roses - or any flowers for that matter - would cost. So instead we are doing something a little more unusual, which has this evening had me making approximately 250 'sheep' in preparation for the tournament on Saturday:



Yes, it's a heap of sheep. Tomorrow I have to make the, er, sorting area to go with them, plus finish the kneeling cushions before we collect our visitors. No doubt I'll come up with other things to do while I'm at it. For now, though, given that I did a 5-hour drive today and will be doing another tomorrow, I think I'm going to go to bed.
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I can see why World of Goo defines an OCD level for each puzzle.

Its very definitely an obsessive-compulsive game. The sort that has just stolen an hour of my time without me even noticing it. Not only that, but it still has the power to make me laugh when it all goes pear-shaped. Or, more correctly, goes tangled-pile-of-wreckage-shaped. I've now completed the first two chapters and the first level of the third, and it's definitely worth the $20. I'm very tempted to download the Wii version as I think it would make a very amusing multi-player game too.

Yesterday was another one of those strange religious holidays (Monday of Whitsun, I believe) so it's a short week at work. Even shorter, given that I'm driving down to Reykjavik tomorrow. Hmm... Perhaps I'd better take my laptop with me and try to sneak a few hours of work in while I'm down there. It would assuage my guilty conscience a little, as I didn't have time today to finish the big strategy document.

I also undertook my first serious entrepreneurial move, by investing a little starter money in a new-production game designed by a friend of mine. More details will appear later (because, after all, I have to encourage you to buy this game when it comes out) but it's still a little hush-hush until it comes back from the printers. It's all quite exciting really.
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Over the weekend I've been able to make some progress on the geekbroidery.

I've had M visiting this weekend, and as well as the normal assorted dressmaking that goes on on such weekends (and the fact that she was mad enough to do a half-marathon on Saturday!) we also managed to work through the entirety of season 2 of The Tudors. Now as I'd already seen this it gave me the perfect opportunity to get on with the geekbroidery.

This is such a logical and ordered embroidery that it clearly required a logical and ordered approach to stitching it. Thus I decided that I would do it colour by colour, prime number by prime number.



The number 2 is Medium Sky Blue, and was the most complex of patterns to do because I had to make sure that the shape encoding was correct. It's done in two strands of Persian wool, my preferred embroidery wool although I do so little crewel and canvaswork that I don't use it anywhere near as often as I'd like. Number 1 is Light Strawberry Red, but it doesn't really count as it's not a prime number.



Number 3 is Medium Fuscia, which clashes beautifully with the blue. It was while I was doing this colour that I realised just how much potential this piece has. I know the shape coding. I can count in threes. This means that once I pick up the colour I don't need to look at the pattern, I can just keep going and know precisely where the next section of the colour must be stitched.



Dark Blue Green represents 5, and by now I'd got into full swing, to the point where it's almost a zen thing - in, out, in, out, repeat forever until you get to the end of the block then move onto the next block.

Looking at those three pictures it's interesting to note the differences in colour depending on the lighting. The darker one gives a much better impression of how bright the colours actually are. This is not going to be an embroidery for blending elegantly into the decor, but I don't care, as it's the complexity and content that really appeals.
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