We saw Alexander Ekman’s Midsommarnattsdröm (“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”) at the Royal Opera during its first run, which must have been in 2015 or 2016. Now it’s back, and we saw it again.

I’m glad that the Opera is willing to invest in a show with such a large cast. (I counted 40+ people on the stage.) The mass scenes would not have had the same impact with, say, half the number of dancers. Forty people marching, chest to back, makes an impression. Forty people streaming back and forth fills the scene, Twenty people doing the same thing would be puny.

During the interval, dancers were performing in the Golden Foyer of the opera house, seated on three-metre-tall chairs. Mostly a gimmick, and while there were people taking photos, I didn’t see anyone pay them real attention for any longer time.

Blogging about the hidden woods in the neighbourhood made me curious. I looked at a map and spotted another green area, less than ten minutes’ walk away, that I didn’t know anything about. It’s nestled among residential quarters just like ours, but there’s a slightly larger road between here and there, so I never end up there if I just go out for a walk.

It’s right across the street from a small park with a playground where I know for sure that I’ve been with the kids at some point, but even then I didn’t even notice the woods.

Now I went there to explore. It turned out to be a designated area for off-leash dog walking. There wasn’t a single dog there, at nine o’clock at night, nor any humans. But there were some paths and hills and rocks, as usual. The hills ended in a cliff, tall and steep enough to be fenced at the top, with a view out over old residential quarters towards the new student housing next to the railway line. I should go back there in proper daylight and with a proper camera some day.

The woods were mostly pine on the hilly bits and the cliff, but deciduous trees lower down, which was rather nice, because songbirds like them a lot better. Pine forests are much quieter than leafy ones.

Finish one sweater, start thinking about the next one. First step: knit, block and measure a gauge swatch. I don’t much like keeping my gauge swatches – they take up space, and it’s unlikely that I’ll ever have any benefit from them – so I usually rip them up and reuse the yarn immediately.

The yarn looks unusable, and mostly is unusable. Crinkly and uneven. But then I put it in lukewarm water for ten minutes, gently massage it a bit, squeeze out the water – and it looks just like new. Like magic. Except now it smells like a wet sheep, which is less magical but also kind of wonderful.

I finished the crazy sweater, and even wove in all the ends – of which there was a lot, due to both the stripes and the shaped construction.

It didn’t come out quite as I had pictured it. The stripes could have been more uneven in width and distribution. Now I just eyeballed things, and clearly ended up converging at some kind of comfortable width and comfortable distance. Also, I had imagined a more drapey look, but the garter stitch made the fabric a bit stiff.

To let the stripes and the crazy yarn get most of the attention, I kept everything else as simple as possible. No ribbing or anything around the neckline, just one row of single crochet to even out and strengthen the edge, and nothing at all along the cuffs and hem. I rather like this simple, pared-down look.

Initially as I finished the sweater and looked at it, I wasn’t sure how much I liked its combination of loose fit and thick fabric. But then I put it on and it felt amazingly comfortable – soft, loose and very stretchy without being baggy. And it is kind of fun. So now I’ve been wearing it around the house in the evenings almost every day. I think it might be a perfect sweater for the in-between seasons, especially when lounging at home. It may not see much use outside the house – it’s too bulky to fit under a coat (at least under any of mine), and somewhat loosely knit so not much protection at all against the wind on its own.

The last in the series of solo piano concerts at Konserthuset/Stockholm Concert Hall, today with Peter Friis Johansson.

First, Henry Cowell’s Three Irish Legends – avant-garde music from 1922. Interesting and energetic. At times the piece requires the pianist to use his entire lower arms to play, not just his fingers. Perhaps not my favourite, but I’m glad I heard this.

Next, Bo Linde, a mid-century Swedish composer. OK, bot not this music didn’t really do anything for me.

Last, John Cage’s Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano, which means a piano that has been modified by putting small objects – screws, erasers, pieces of plastic – on or between the strings. This sounded intriguing before I’d heard it, remained interesting for the first ten or fifteen minutes, but there wasn’t enough actual music to keep my interest beyond that. Also after a while the music felt like it was just… fading out. Like a constant diminuendo, as if the music was about to end – for half an hour.

I like simple music, and minimalist music, but this was too minimal for me. It wasn’t even meditative. Some music can sometimes put me in a state that’s almost awake dreaming, and I have to rouse myself to keep listening. This didn’t even capture enough of my brain to do that. It just became background noise while I sat and thought of other things.

Several people in the audience left in the interval before the John Cage piece. More walked out about ten minutes into it. (I couldn’t make myself do that.) Many rose and left as soon as the applause started – some in clear relief, others voicing complaints. And at the same time, a few were shouting “Bravo!” at the back.

I asked if I could step up on the stage to see the prepared piano up close, but the staff clearly just wanted the audience to be gone so they could clean up and go home, so I had to make do with photos of the strings and objects as reflected in the lid of the piano, from a distance.

Our neighbour has decided that he wants to replace the chain link fence between our yards. The fence is old, several posts having rusted through entirely, so I do kind of understand him. To that end he’s taken down four trees – all on his side of the fence so I can’t object but I’m still sad to see them go. We used to have a green wall on that side of the garden; now we have free views not just into his garden but across the street and into the homes over there.

What really pissed me off is that one of those trees he felled towards our garden, and it crushed most of my baby plum tree. The one that I waited half a year just to get delivered, and then two years to establish and start growing. I didn’t even get an apology – not even a note in the mailbox. Eric noticed the broken tree; I investigated and saw the tell-tale sawdust and a handful of maple flowers and twigs.

When I went to the neighbour to complain, his reaction was more or less “whatever”. He offered to pay for a new tree, which I will let him do, but that’s not going to bring back those years of waiting.

Ingrid has been practising driving, off and on since autumn. Started on a parking lot with stopping, starting, basic manoeuvering and shifting gears; then moved on to an industrial area that was mostly abandoned during weekends. Today we went out into actual traffic and drove first to Vällingby and back, and then to Råcksta and back. Both times on roads that Ingrid is well familiar with from all her moped trips. The moped driving has been a very practical way of warming up to driving a car – she’s used to traffic, speed limits and all that, and all she needs to get used to now is handling the car.

My Stockholm-themed embroidery is slowly moving forward. It feels like I’ve spent forever on the houses, and especially the little bitty windows. But today I did all of the red house on the left and then, boom, all three of the roofs on the right as well, which felt good.

First of May, public holiday, great weather – gardening time!

This year I’m decommissioning the planting boxes in the kitchen garden. They’re more hassle than they’re worth. I can’t say they’ve been useless – the home-grown peas were nice – but overall just not worth it.

Most of all I’m tired of the endless watering. Maybe it’s because they’re raised (heated by the sun from the sides, no buffering from the soil around them). Maybe it’s because of the soil I’ve bought – much of the soil that is sold is very peaty. Maybe both and then some more. But the soil dries out so fast that I can never get a break from the watering. And then we go away for a week and come back to half-dead plants.

The work might be worth it if the yield was great. But with strawberries, for example, a planter fits six plants, which altogether yields a couple of breakfast bowls of strawberries. Maybe three. To share between the four of us. Enough to whet the appetite, but it’s not like we could eat home-grown strawberries with our cereal all summer. So to make it worth it, we’d need to have a much larger kitchen garden.

The raspberries, which I had hopes for – larger plants, more fruit – just died. Could be because I couldn’t keep up with the watering?

So now I’m giving up. I don’t know what I’ll do with this part of the garden instead, but whatever it is, it’ll have to tolerate dry conditions and shallow soil and survive without daily coddling. And as for strawberries, we’ll just buy all the strawberries that we can eat.

I’m using the soil from the planting boxes to fill in sunken bits of the lawn. I recall the lawn as being much more even when we moved in – now it’s got dips and bumps and depressions all over. If I really cared about the state of the lawn, I could invest much more work in evening it out properly, but this might at least improve the situation while utilising all this soil I have. Throw some grass seeds on it, and it’ll be good enough.