Nysse appears to be almost as comfortable up in a tree as he is on the ground. Walks around, up and down the branches, or sits and surveys his territory. Clearly knows what he’s doing and never gets himself into a place that he can’t get back down from.

He doesn’t quite lounge around and fall asleep, though, as he does on furniture.

The sweater I’m knitting has rows of dots in contrasting colour going down the middle at the front and the back. It’s a weird technique – the main colour yarn runs behind the dots and the dots themselves are barely attached, they just sort of hover over the main yarn. It’s neither proper intarsia knitting nor proper stranded colourwork. I’m still not fully convinced that the dots will lie in place properly in the long run. On my first attempt at this sweater I actually skipped them and thought it would be better to embroider the dots afterwards, but it was a bit boring to just knit a single colour all the time and barely any pattern. So this time I’m following the instructions.

The dogma embroidery, continued. (Add chain stitch. Use a colour you don’t normally use. Add a pattern. Echo a part of your motif elsewhere. Emphasize a part of your work with a similar colour.)

As a piece of finished embroidery, it’s junk. A jerky, unbalanced, random agglomeration of parts that don’t go well together. Some of the later steps helped pull the earlier ones together a little bit, but it’s still very obvious that there is no overall design or composition.

As a creative approach, it’s been great. Letting go of all expectations regarding the outcome and just going with the flow, fitting in whatever curveball I’m thrown as best I can. Later steps overlapping with earlier stitches. It doesn’t matter what the result looks like. This doesn’t need to be either beautiful or useful.

As a learning process, it’s been interesting. I’ve learned – again – that achieving apparent randomness is hard. The seed stitches tend to start pulling into lines and naturally distribute themselves evenly. I’m not sure how to make them uneven for real. I also learned that I like the tangle that the seed stitch makes on the rear side.

Heart-shaped light sculptures in Fatbursparken.

We don’t pay much attention to Valentine’s day, but Ingrid bought a bouquet of pink and red roses, and I made pink pancakes.

Lining attached, piping trimmed, top-stitching added.

Now I need to think of something to put inside it.

Learning point for next time: a padded lining takes up space, so for a perfect fit, it should be smaller than the outer walls.

Out walking again. I haven’t been doing any longer walks in the past few months and I need to get my legs used to being out all day again, so I can manage the upcoming annual ski tour in March.

Today’s walk was only around 10 or 11 km. The next section of Signature Trail Stockholm was a short one, which might otherwise have been disappointing, but my afternoon was blocked out for Spånga scout club’s annual general meeting so I didn’t have time for a full-day walk anyway.

The first couple of kilometres were pure transportation along an asphalted trail from Barkarby to Akalla. From there on the trail followed Igelbäcken brook along the open fields of southern Järvafältet. The path was very icy at times, but usually there was space to walk next to it.

South of Järvafältet the trail went into Ursvik forest with all its exercise trails. It’s very accessible and criss-crossed with paths in every direction, which is nice when you want to walk around at random, but somewhat inconvenient when trying to get from A to B. And there were no marking specifically for the Signature Trail. I had to keep looking at the digital map all the time.

The second section of the trail ended at a golf course, just like the first one, funnily enough. But a much less scenic one.

It’s a few degrees below zero outside and I’m wrapping myself in a scarf and buttoning up my wool coat. Adrian, meanwhile, has a thin windproof jacket over his sweater and doesn’t even close it because he likes the feeling of freedom. Just looking at him makes me shiver.

I tried photographing him while we were walking, but it was hard to get any distance. Naturally, as we walk together and talk together, he quickly gravitates closer to me.

Sweater progress photo.

If I was filthy rich and had more rooms in my house than I knew what to do with, I’d have a crafts room with lots of natural light, and a large mirror well-positioned to take advantage of that light for all my sweater and cardigan selfies.

Now I don’t have that, so I can choose between a dark hallway and a well-lit but sterile-looking bathroom.

But the sweater is looking good!

I have reached a new stage in my life: that of a glasses wearer.

In bad light, towards the end of the day when my eyes are tired, looking at tiny things, I found myself having to move those things further away from myself in order to properly focus on them. Reading is not a problem at all, but embroidering seed stitch in lamplight or darning black-on-black were no longer effortless.