Female complications, day 18


    Electric noise


    At breakfast Kari is a bit sore and tired but in a good happy mood. I''m tired and lethargic but I can take a nap after being ''alone and bored''.


    I''ve showered and just slump down into the couch, contemplating what to do while I wait, when Hillevi shows up - freshly showered and clearly embarrassed and a bit uncomfortable as she sits next to me. Oh, this is awkward....


    But I just have to man up, although it feels damn weird as I know and see her as a friend. But eventually our small talk feels more relaxed, and I''ve reassure myself she truly wants us to have sex. She knows it''s important to me that she feel absolutely no pressure and can say no at any time. Hillevi is clearly uncomfortable with kissing or any mouth-to-mouth action, as it feels too intimate, and she definitely prefers the couch or sheepskin sleeping pads on the floor instead of my bed, which is my wife''s and concubines''. I see some similarities with Jane''s view on sex with women, but I think it''s for a different reason for Hillevi, because except this short moment, we will be master and bodyguard. Frankly, I agree that the bed might feel awkward. We will have to be extra careful as she has no IUD, and we both agreed to use condoms.


    Hillevi helps me lay out and snap together a couple of sheepskin sleeping pads on the floor, which are joined by blankets and pillows while Hillevi lights my fireplace to help us keep warm and make it a little more special. The central heating steam boiler actually works so well that my fireplace is generally only used when I''m trying to make it more special for a sambo, and usually Kari. She do like looking at fire and flames. We sit there beside each other and it''s a little uncomfortable who''s going to make the first move, but I move to sit behind her, and start tenderly touch her body and kiss her shoulder until Hillevi seems to accept that we really will have sex, and then she gets ... wild.


    It''s not me having sex with her. It''s her having sex with me, and she''s stronger than me.


    But we have a nice time together, and when I go to take another quick shower, Hillevi just continues to lie on the sheepskin pads, blankets and pillows on the floor in front of the fire, with a satisfied smile on her face. She even gives me a little kiss on the cheek before I leave, as an extra ''thank you'' for trying to make everything as good as possible for her, respecting her wishes and making her feel like we are equal lovers. Non kissing lovers. I just close the door and let her enjoy her after sex feeling. She had really been looking forward to experiencing me going down on her. Hillevi was good floor company although lack of an IUD meant we had to be extra careful.


    I meet Caecilia and Elvira on the balcony who are of course waiting to clean up after us, having previously cleaned up after the night with Kari. I ask them to wait a bit so that Hillevi can take her time to enjoy her feeling and get dressed and leave when she feels like it, instead of feeling forced out. And hold back on the questions. Caecilia is so curious. Once again my thoughts go off on a tangent, that it''s nice that I have a bodyguard who doesn''t mind being witness to sex if I''m not alone with her, and a courtesan who makes sure no one disturbs me when I have sex with others, if she cannot participate herself.


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    Ciara helps me with my haircut and beard, and afterwards she rests her head on my chest as I lie on the bed and rest. It''s not just because I feel tired and lazy, I am thinking about the comical amount of orders they''re going to try to place for things, and I do look forward to the parts they''re going to pick up. So many projects.


    The music group has gathered a really good set of instruments, and they are trying to think of more. The drum kit has been upgraded and looks quite modern, with a foot pedal for a big bass drum and another for a hi-hat. It seems that Jane and Hillevi are both more natural drummers than anything else, and there are quite a few people who want to take part in the music sessions, so it''s lucky I bought extra instruments. Kari can actually play two instruments and was also taught to sing and learned songs, but she has no interest in music and has previously not wanted to be part of the music groups performances, but has started to change her mind and is trying to regain her old skills. One of Jane''s goals is to try to create a couple of more modern blown instruments like trumpets and saxophone, but the most current project is a good pan flute, which could become popular. The culture here have horns and a couple of regular flutes and a weird double flute. The Academy will also need instruments in the future so students can practice and get some music training, so they will buy more. And have more made. Agnes and Ryla''s future musical participation will only make the music group better.


    Caecilia will try to have two special instruments made, which the instrument maker will surely say are useless, especially one of them. I have made several sketches of them, and want to do the final touches myself on them and I will give an advance payment for the job, so I believe he will do it. Basically I''ve copied a six string guitar from music video footage, pictures and other stuff, and I have plans to build a mechanical vibrato that works on acoustic guitars. Actually, it probably won''t be an exact copy of a Bigsby or the other vibrato systems there is, but it will give vibrato on a lever. I hope to modify and add a microphone in it, or piezo pickup, but it might be difficult to make a piezo here and get the piezo sensitive and good, and it requires a signal conversion and electrical amplification. A dynamic or ribbon microphone should give the best sound quality, but must also have electrical amplification, and thus all amplified pickups has limited use before vacuum tubes exist.Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.


    The other guitar, however, is from James May''s ''The Reassembler'' where he assembles a solid body electric guitar. I like most of James May''s programmes, and love the short Reassembler series. Winding electric pickups will be hard enough as I have a limited amount of suitably thin copper wire, and it will probably be a hot rail style of pickup, just to get stronger signal and ease of manufacture with two metal plates and a larger magnet between, but I will need to build in a small preamp with volume. The guitar might get rotary switches for pitch and distortion, as just an amplified acoustic guitar isn''t really what either I or Iselin are looking for. A Boss HM-2 pedal would be overkill even if you could build something similar with a quad op-amp, but unnecessarily complicated, and a Wah Wah Cry Baby is also complicated. I don''t want to sacrifice too many Midg?rd electrical components on the instrument.


    I''m most worried about the guitar metal strings though. They have to be spring steel to be any good, and they need to be so carefully made to sound well. The thinnest ones have their quality and accuracy problem, the spiral wound ones are a completely different problem. Then, steel strings require a stronger guitar and neck than regular instruments here have. Their regular strings here made of sinew obviously don''t work to influence an electric field. There''s actually a pretty good chance of some kind of four string guitar just because I have a hard time getting and making small parts and screws, and am worried about the strength of the neck with strong steel strings. I don''t even know if the instrument maker can make an internal iron-reinforced neck, so he''s going to make four necks, two of which are unassembled so I can try putting a steel rod in, and then there is the whole issue about how well it works over the long run. I reckon that there may be quite a lot of work to get even one string right, not to mention several, but I assume Iselin and Caecilia will be interested in helping with the development.


    In the end: If the projects fail, they fail. But I''m looking forward to hopefully getting them working usefully enough, and that someone wants to play the guitars. It will be primitive in any case, with limited range and sound quality, but frankly, the goal for the electric guitar is not fine-tuned acoustic tones accompanied by faint pure vocals, while also not Swedish Death Metal.


    If I succeed in manufacturing vacuum tubes in the future and making good pickups and microphones, then there will be several electrically amplified instruments, tube amplifiers and speakers made. I can only try and hope the instruments will be good enough to use, and that both my wonderfully sexy wife and my courtesan likes to use them, although I believe Iselin will want to play completely different music than the others. She might not even be satisfied with simple rock. Jane on drums would probably be game anyway, and I''m interested in learning to play some instrument myself. A synth would be damn fun but that''s so far in the future, if it''s even possible in my lifetime.


    Maybe I can ''circuit bend'' and use the circuits and components that are never meant to work that way or for other things to make ''noises'' that can become music? It might be worth spending time on it when I''m bored. I''m nowhere near as good at it as ''Look mum, no computor'' but it might make something useful out of something useless, and it''s an interesting project. It does require me to desolder and modify IC''s etc, so better soldering equipment would be useful, although some IC''s can be carefully taken leg by leg. The Bluetooth headphones have an amplifying circuit with lots of filter components and other things around it, and an IC''s digital outputs may or may not make different audio noise or tones...


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    Olafr really wants to see a boat powered by fire without sails or someone rowing it, but the first step is trying to run the steam boiler on land. However, this requires a wooden frame to be built to hold the boiler and steam engine together as it is fixed pipework. My ships boat builder and carpenter Engdrid don''t really understand what they are going to help me and Olafr build, but it will eventually be install on the catamaran they think of as an extra rope ferry, and we need their help. We will try both paddle wheels and a propeller, and they will build and equip the catamaran with it.


    The carbon rod production and pencils seem at least partially ''solved'', but we clearly need to experiment more with different carbon powders and clays and amounts for different purposes. At least we have something that is a bad pencil. Engdrid has made ready-made pencils by hand-cutting notches in thin flat wooden boards, then gluing the type of carbon rod that gave the best writing line, and gluing another notched wooden board on top, and then after drying, bevelling the edges into ready-made pencils. Not perfect for writing but works, so more mixtures are being experimented with and there will be dedicated machines-tools for milling wood slats with notches for pencil casings, and a better extrusion machine with interchangeable former, and a former for thinner pencil rods. I still need carbon rods for resistors and other things, so it''s good with more options. If my merchant empire can sell good pencils cheaply to the population, it will revolutionise writing more than fountain pens will.


    Jane is so happy to have some kind of working pencils, but also because I''ve solved yet another kind of electric light, and commented that her faith in my ingenuity is restored. She can live without electric cars and internet as long as she has electric light. And I agree.


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