Found some merino wool jersey and tried sewing a basic top of it. It worked just as well as the cotton jersey I’ve been sewing simple tops and dresses of. Thicker, but it still fit under the foot of the sewing machine. This was less fun than knitting a wool top, but a heck of a lot cheaper and faster.

Lots of snow, no clearing of the streets, and repeated thaw-and-freeze cycles have turned all the roads around here into fields of ice. It’s almost like the city has given up on maintaining the roads at all. No ploughing, no sanding, just whatever. The only bits that are walkable are the ones where the ice has melted down enough to reach older layers of gravel from, like, last year. I toddle to the train station like Bambi on ice. Because I am on ice.

What is the opposite of a cheerleading?

Demonstratively sleeping right in the middle of my workout.

I found this funky vintage wool yarn at Tradera (Swedish ebay) and bought it because I liked the look of it. After winding it, I still like the look of it. (Which is not always the case – most of the ugliest yarn I ever bought is still in my yarn stash.)

Knitting it into something that looks good will require some more work, though. The yarn varies not just in colour but also in thickness, and it’s got a kind of a curl to it, like it’s been spun around a wire that’s later been removed. In straight up stocking stitch it just made stripes, not the variegation I had expected, and the stitches looked uneven. It really didn’t do the yarn justice.

So I tried all sorts of other things, to mix up the stripes: combining it with a solid colour in slip-stitch patterns; slip-stitch patterns with just the funky yarn, both on stocking stitch and on reverse stocking stitch. And then – just simple garter stitch, which worked better than any of the other stitches. Broke up the stripes just enough to soften the impression, but without muddling it all up (like what happened with the 2nd attempt of combining it with black).

Went to a concert with Sara Parkman together with Hampus Norén and Hägersten A Cappella, at Uppbenbarelsekyrkan (Church of Revelation) in Hägersten. Beautiful church, beautiful music, a wonderful experience.

The concert was a mixture of old classical music (ranging from Hildegard Von Bingen to Gregorio Allegri), modern classical music (Arvo Pärt), Swedish folk tunes and herding calls, new music written by Sara Parkman, and combinations of the above.

The concert ended with a sing-along version of one of Sara Parkman’s songs, with a text by Erik Gustaf Geijer, another meeting of old and new. I can generally manage to follow along in an average sing-along tune, especially when I have the score AND I am given multiple chances – this one had two short verses and we sang it three times – but this melody was way above my skill level. But the experience was moving nevertheless.

Powerful and emotional and beautiful. Sara Parkman’s passion and presence made it a truly memorable experience.

Yesterday’s embroidery club session focused on three-dimensional embroidery techniques.

French knots are the simplest example of those. Sometimes they come out really well for me, and sometimes every other knot loses shape.

Bullion knots – like French knots, but elongated into tiny sausages – were even harder. They kept coming out like small, uneven worms. I think I had the wrong yarn for this – they’d be easier with a smoother, less grippy yarn.

The woven stitches worked better, and the woven wheel stitches looked really nice in fluffy wool yarn.

Tried and mostly failed to get a photo of myself and my newly finished cardigan, without too many of the bathroom fixtures or other crap in view. The more I tried, the worse the results got. After a while I was overthinking it so much that I sometimes didn’t even manage to get into position before the timer triggered. I think it just isn’t doable.

The cardigan fits super well, though!

My locker, at work.

On the outside: two magnets to identify the locker as mine. One with a fun photo taken when I joined tretton37; one a quick chain-stitched embroidered patch.

On the inside: essential stuff that I wouldn’t want to be without at work. This includes:

• A thick hoodie, almost invisible behind everything else, and a soft woolly shawl. For several weeks, if not months, the heating wasn’t working properly in the office. Facilities management claimed the system was fine, and yet everybody in the office was freezing and layering up. Now that they’ve fixed it, I might take the hoodie home. The shawl stays, though.
• An external hard drive with a backup of my home computer and all my photos.
• A bottle of fluoride mouthwash. I have weak teeth, and try to remember to use it every day.
• A carton of panty liners.
• A bar of Friis Holm Tobago dark milk chocolate.
• A pad of sticky notes and a good pen.

I have a similar stash at the Sortera office, with the exception of the extra thick hoodie, and the backup drive.

The new light fixture is so great. I put stronger lightbulbs in there than I thought we’d need, and now I’m glad I did so. I can sit and sew late at night, with black thread on graphite fabric, without even straining my eyes or wearing glasses.

The last decent-sized bundle of yarn I had in my yarn drawer turned out to be unusable for the purpose I bought it for. First it turned out to be low quality. Badly cleaned, with ridiculous amounts of plant matter in it. And I ran into three knots and breaks in just two hanks of yarn.

Plus then I found out it was scratchy, too. I had barely cast on knitted a couple of rows when it was already making my fingers sore. If I can’t even stand to hold the yarn while knitting, I’m not going to be wearing anything I make from it. Bummer. It was such a nice colour!