Midwinter calling, day 46

The art of hiding

Oh, wow.

This is still a very nice way to wake up, and Kari really want to prove that she is just as good as Iselin at this particular wake up method, and she is good, helped by her tongue and enthusiasm.

Just as Iselin, Kari comes crawling up and we just lie and cuddle a bit while we chat about the previous night; what she liked; what she really loved; if there were any problems or not as good moments or things, and what she thought of the dildos and so on. It's important to accept both positive and negative criticism, otherwise I won't know how to improve, and I want to be as good as I can for all of them. Kari and Iselin have fully embraced that mindset, for different reasons and slightly different subjects. I was absolutely right about Kari's experience after she left me in the workshop yesterday and she was in a good mood and content as we fell asleep. Kari totally agrees that a sink and bidet in my bedroom walk-in closet and down in the b-room would be a good idea, because it would make it easier to clean up, wash things and us.

Kari loves her corset, and describes the feeling of it and how it gives her a nice body shape - like there is something wrong with her natural one. She now wants another corset that goes up and slightly over the breasts, and one that just cinches the waist, and a couple of new dresses that show off the figure better with laces like the ones Jane made for Ciara and herself, and maybe a dress with one of those hidden slit at the back with buttons like the women in the B-mansion had, just for me down in the b-room, and.... Kari continues talking about what she wants and will have made, and it sounds like her clothes account will go up quite a lot in the future. But she seems so happy and have a dreamy enthusiastic naughty look that I'm happy to spend that silver. It's partly for my sake and pleasure.

I realise that with all the property Kari owns, she likely already has quite a lot of silver waiting for her, but that also means that I have no control over how much silver she spends, or on what. Kari is looking forward to the next real shopping opportunity in Borgarsandr, and it's lucky that there is no internet or telephones and catalogues to order things from here. She wants to buy more fabric of different kinds, more leather, and must get better at sewn and ....

Kari is like a squirrel on speed in her descriptions, and jumps between topics and things as she follow each tangent and naughty idea, and I am convinced it will be an interesting future for both of us. Caecilia and Kari make Death by Snu-Snu seem more and more likely, but it's should be a heck of nice road to follow. There are worse fates.

Shakini, Ciara and Jane are decorating and preparing for the wedding, and also testing decorations. The guards, Ciara and Jane surprise me by having made garlands, decorations and painted cardboard pennants which are hung together with spruce branches and other greenery, and they are decorating the inside of the house. Since autumn, we've brought stiffer paper for crafts in red, green, yellow, blue, grey and black. It's not something the papermaker normally stores much of because few asks for it, but he was willing to make batches of the colours and Iselin and Kari decided that sooner or later it will be used, because stiff paper has a lot of crafts use or models. Or just to fold paper air planes from.

When I see a gnome with a red knit cap among the decorations, it hits me, because many of the decorations are a bit Christmassy. This year will not be a classic Christmas celebration for Jane and me, but she has at least made sure that there are some suitable decorations, and together with the others, she hides quite a lot of two-to-three decimeter sized gnomes with coloured knitted caps among the decorations and things. The paper gnomes show up in all sorts of places, and they've had fun with the placement of most of the gnomes, as the gnomes try to hide, but do a poor job like someone just covers the eyes, and others have their head stuck in the spruce but you can see the butt sticking out, or legs dangling down through the greenery, or the body showing on both sides of something narrow. So I ask Jane.

"I just had too. I know there won't be any real Christmas with lights, gifts, music and everything... but I had to at least add a little. You're not really a Christmas person, but thank you for having Christmas music on your tablet. Although I was not expecting 'Christmas at ground zero' or 'The night Santa went crazy'. Not to mention the other Yankovic songs you have when I started looking. Anyho, the house should be decorated with green if it's a wedding, and you did tell me about the old Christmas traditions in Scandinavia. About the tiny 'hustomte'; the mini Santa gnomes that takes care of the farm and animals, but hides for the big people, and that lovely animated 'Gnomes' movie about a wedding between two of them, and the evil trolls trying to rid the forest of them and kidnapping the bride. They do believe in Gnomes, Trolls and things like that, and have a few traditions being close, so I thought why not go a bit old school. Or new school. Sometimes it's really annoying thinking about the huge difference in era between us and them. Anyho, Iselin loved the idea, and it is her wedding, and a lot of the hidden 'hustomte' are her suggestions. She's hidden the most of them and Iselin, Ciara, Alith and Hillevi made more when I wasn't looking. They've never seen a real one, but we kind of wish the hustomte actually exist for real here, and hopefully decorations like these might be a future tradition."

Jane looks sad, but doesn't want me to try to comfort or cheer her up. Christmas is probably extra difficult for her if she is a person who is really used to special traditions, and does things with the family and so on. Sure, I like Christmas, but it doesn't take much to make it feel Christmas and festive for me. With a sigh, Jane continues to put up more decorations as Bodil leads the way to the workshop to show the wooden multimeter case is completely finished.

I've been putting this off for far too long, and already made several moving coil instruments and stuff, so while the other decorated I'm finishing the construction of proper multimeter. Most of it has already been done, like a special moving coil instrument, and Bodil did really nice work on the case with its rotary switch, and Hillevi on the leather strap. The multimeter's moving coil instrument differs mostly in the length of the needle and that it has a mirror strip in silver-plated brass behind part of the pointer so that more accurate readings can be made. By lining up the needle reflection with the needle makes sure it's read right on. Will this be accurate enough to use that? Sort off. Since Iselin learned what I'm doing, she left the last decoration work to others and Kari also help with small parts as we finish the construction and calibrate each part. Jane discovers what we're doing when asking Iselin something about the decorations, and returns with a little piece of paper with some pretty embellishments on the edges in a suitably Victorian steampunk style, and a little rune text saying 'Warning! Sejd inside. Handle with care.' Iselin laughs like hell, and she immediately gets the humour is on several levels and loves it, which eventually gets Kari to laugh in her a more refined way. I love that this smart sexy nerdy woman will soon be my wife. The joke is funny enough that I glue the little piece of paper on the outside where it is visible but not in the way or subject to much handling wear and tear.

For now, this multimeter will use a few AA batteries to drive its op-amp and be able to measure resistance etc. It is needed because the coils current sensitivity is poor even with the finest, thinnest litz wire from the Bluetooth headset because of the weak magnet, but an op-amp also provides better isolation and higher input impedance, etc. The multimeter's measurement rotary switch/knob has 24 positions around the outside, but some positions are currently unused. There is an Off mode, then the three ranges for Volts, Amperes and Resistance, and all selected for what I need and can do, and because an analogue meter like this doesn't get a linear scale for things like resistance and the scale have infinity in one the end, so there are several scales but can't be too many. Due to the rise to infinity, only 80% of the scale is practically used.

Volt modes are 3mV-30mV-300mV-3V-10V-30V-100V-300V with an additional input for AC which only works well on the 10V scale and higher due to the rectification and filtering. Ampere modes are 1mA-10mA-100mA-1A with an additional physical input to measure 10A when 1A mode is selected. Then resistance positions 10-100-1k-10k-100k-1M ohm. Then a mode for semiconductor measurement for diodes that can show voltage drops. There are four empty positions, but I hope to use them to do an inductor or capacitor measurement function in the future. It might be an LC measurement function. Or something else, like a dip meter for radio use. Those four are 'nice to have' positions, and 24 is an easy good division on a circle, with enough physical space for the contact pads on the underside of the rotary switch. The multimeter's calibration is good enough and probably only a few percent off, and even has built-in calibration points for volts as well as several resistors. I will build another similarly advanced multimeter, and probably at least two simple unpowered passive multimeters with limited functions and scale.

Jane's little decoration of the multimeter means that I allow her to decorate the main panel in the hall as well, which gets the same warning text. It fits, and frankly very few will see the multimeter but everyone can see the meter on the main panel, and her craftsmanship deserves to be appreciated. To make Jane's Christmas experience a little better, I quickly and secretly build a Christmas tree stand.