After a three-day conference weekend, my flex hour bank is near to overflowing. I took a lunch break of two and a half hours, walked around lake Trekanten with a friend, and had a nice leisurely lunch on the pier.

This morning was basically free time in Strömstad. There wasn’t even an expectation to spend it with your colleagues: one of the suggested activities was spending time in the spa. I went walking. I can’t believe I get paid to do this.

Strömstad kommun had a nice information page with suggested walks in the area. I found two that sounded nice, and realized that – if I didn’t start too late – I’d actually have time for both.

Trail #44 was a circular route of 3.7 km in mixed forest. It looked like it might not get much traffic. The signs were ancient, and the splotches of red paint on the trees were sometimes faded enough to look like the remains of a bloody ritual.

Slightly muddy forest. Very quiet, I didn’t meet a soul. (It was a rainy Sunday morning, so…)

There was a fair bit of coastal pine forest, not that different from the nature in Sörmland.

I was very glad I had my digital map to follow – the trail markings were only possible to find if you already knew which way the trail went. Can you spot the dot of red paint here? It’s not either of the dark markings – no, it’s the faded spot just to the right and front of one of them.

The circular route started and ended at a camping ground, which was like a ghost town at this time of the year.

A kilometre of so along asphalt roads through a small neighbourhood of houses, and then I was on the coastal path.

The second trail circled around the small island (or maybe peninsula) of Nötholmen. Looked like an island to me, although it was connected to the mainland with a very short bridge, and at least one text called it a peninsula.

Coastal cliffs with pines and juniper bushes, not that dissimilar from the Stockholm archipelago.

Sortera was with me even here.

What was quite different from the Stockholm archipelago was the coastal fauna. There were empty oyster shells dotting the forest and the rocks, something I’ve never run across around Stockholm.

The walking route on Nötholmen was short, which I was very happy about, because that left me plenty of time for photography. Oyster shells, other shells, sun-bleached bird-eaten crab shells, other small dead sea creatures.

And all this just a stone’s throw from the hotel, so close to Strömstad.

Today was “getting to know each other” day, by way of a treasure hunt on bicycles.

We took a couple of pre-booked boats from Strömstad to South Koster island. It was windy and a bit cold, but the views were nice.

On South Koster, we all got bikes and went off on a treasure hunt kind of thing. We’d all been divided into teams of about 8 people beforehand, with a mixture of people in each team, both geographically and departmentally. There was a website with a map, and markers on the map denoting places where we would do various tasks. The tasks were predictably mostly quite cringeworthy. “Take a photo of your team to illustrate teamwork.” “Record a team cheer.” “Answer this quiz with questions about Evidi.”

There wasn’t much time to complete the tasks; our team was half an hour late for lunch and still didn’t manage to get all of them. Hence the lack of photos. I guess you could say that a little bit of teambuilding happened? We spoke to each other, but didn’t have an awful lot of time for that either.

Lunch was at Kläpphagen, which at least served better vegetarian fare than Strömstad Spa, although that bar was very low. (Yesterday’s dinner at Strömstad Spa had a barbecue theme. The meat-eaters got at least four kinds of grilled meat. The vegetarians got the meat-eaters’ side orders: potatoes, corn on the cob, sallad. That’s it.) This place did have a delicious vegetarian dish, but I ended up eating salmon because there was no vegetarian protein. Seriously, are these people all living in the last century?

Got back on the boats and were ferried back to Strömstad. Lovely views again. And not a drop of rain! The weather forecast promised heavy rain off and on through the day, and I had been mentally preparing for a grim day out. But somehow we managed to miss all of the rain. There was none of it while we were on the boats out, none while we biked. Then a serious downpour while we were eating, which was over before lunch was over. No rain on the way back; pouring rain again in the evening.

As of September 1st, Active Solution becomes part of Evidi, a larger group of consulting companies. I don’t yet know enough about them to have a firm opinion on whether I like this or not. Or, rather, I don’t particularly like it, because I intentionally joined a smaller consultancy instead of going for one of the big ones, but I’m not all that upset either – maybe I will learn to like it. It is what it is, for now.

Every summer, Evidi gathers all their employees for a weekend in the countryside. Today was day 1 of a three-day weekend in Strömstad.

Well, first I got a three-hour train ride, an hour in Göteborg, and two more hours on a bus. I had time to see Göteborg cathedral, a few canals (including one with small flowering, floating, artificial islands) and a second hand shop.

Evidi is mostly a Norwegian company, even if they have some of their business in Sweden and Denmark. The mood in Strömstad was seriously dampened by the death of Norway’s King Harald V.

The half-day of conferencing we did was par for the course. Leadership figures going through presentations telling everyone about how great the company was and how well it was doing.

And a case study to be discussed and solved in small groups. Too bad that all the 47 small groups were crammed in one giant conference hall, and 90% of everyone was speaking Norwegian. I barely heard half of what people said due to the noise levels, and understood barely half of that, so I had no chance of participating in any of the discussions. Good thing I had brought my knitting.

My embroidery club starts up today, and I have no project to work on. I haven’t been doing any embroidery at all during the summer. It’s a hobby I enjoy, but it’s not in the top three, so quite often it’s only the club meetings that remind me about it.

Spontaneous embroidery project time! I grabbed a linen table runner that I rarely use because it’s kind of boring. I like the fabric, but it could be more fun. So: let me make it more fun. It will get a scattering of random leaves, at least a bunch at each end, and maybe more if I feel like it.

I made another attempt at the lacy top, still using a smaller needle for the lacy part but with slightly looser tension this time. and it didn’t take long for me to see that it was not going to work out this time either. Same gauge issues as before – the lace has the right stitch gauge but not the right row gauge.

Then I made a fourth attempt. Gave up on the whole diagonal, asymmetric design, and just went for a lacy back and a stockinette front. This way I can use the same needles all around. The lace will have the same row gauge as the stockinette, so I won’t have any skewing or pulling going on. And I can easily adjust for the difference in stitch gauge by allocating fewer stitches for the lace (back) section.

That’s what I was working on at the knitting club today, and explaining to the other ladies there. As I explained the difficulties I’d been having, and my thoughts about how I could work around them, I worked up my courage for a fifth attempt. The current version is a cop-out. It’s missing the key element of what first caught my eye about this top – the asymmetric design. That was the reason for choosing this pattern. If I’m giving up on that aspect, then why even make it? There are definitely more interesting garments I could make than this simplified version.

I’ll put this one aside – the yarn has been through four attempts already, so I’ll give it a rest – and start on a fifth version using another ball. If it fails again, then I can still come back to this one. If it works out, I can rip this up later.

Spent this evening on getting my to-do list up to date. Dumped everything that was in my head, or in my Slack reminders, or in my mailbox, out onto paper. Then sorted and structured it all into my master list.

Master lists (plural), rather, since there is a lot of it. Some of the items on there have been there for years – some of it is “things I could and would like to do when I have time” rather than “things I need to do in the short term”. I find it useful and convenient to have it all on paper, easily visible.

Right now there is quite a lot of “things that would be really good to do in the near term” and I am working on accepting that most of those will not happen, at least not as soon as I would like.

Gratuitous image of relaxed cat.

He looks kind of fat, but it’s mostly because he has a lot of loose skin under his belly. He was overweight this winter but has lost half a kilo since then and is now at a pretty reasonable 5.2 kg.

A moth’s wing that I fond on my desk.

It’s hard to see if the photo is sharp and the wing in focus, because its surface is fuzzy.

Went to an exhibition. Was a bit disappointed.

“En svensk klassiker”, the Swedish Classic Circuit, is the challenge of performing a 30-km run, a cycle race around lake Vättern, the Vasaloppet ski race, and a 3-km swim, in one year.

Some years ago, the wife/partner of a man doing the Swedish Classic Circuit wanted something similar for herself. A challenging, limited-time project within her area of expertise, that she could really invest time and energy in, and afterwards feel a true sense of accomplishment. Instead of sports, she had knitting. Thus was born “En svensk stickklassiker”, the Swedish Knitting Classics.

In one year, participants knit four specific projects based on traditional knitting patterns and techniques from different parts of Sweden. There are two sweaters/cardigans, and two glove/mitten projects. I’m not going to go into detail – you can read all about it on their website. Side by side with the main Knitting Classics, there’s also the Mitten Classics, within which people knit five pairs of gloves/mittens from five countries around the Baltic Sea.

Today I went to see an exhibition at the Almgren silk workshop, showing off the creations of people who have completed the Knitting Classics. I was looking forward to admiring their craftsmanship up close, and maybe learning something along the way.

A lot of sweaters and mittens were on display. While they clearly all arose from the same specific traditions, there was also individual variation.

Unfortunately, the works were displayed in a way that made it really hard to appreciate the craftsmanship. Most of the knitted objects were hung way up, close to the ceiling. Some that were at eye height were on a far wall, with old weaving equipment or other furniture between the viewer and the object.

The Mitten Classics were literally hanging from the ceiling, metres above our heads. All you could see was that there was a bunch of nearly-identical mittens, but it was impossible to appreciate the details. Look at these visitors craning their necks, trying to see the mittens! Just… why?

There were some sets of sweaters hung in a way that you could see them up close. The knitting was incredibly fine, and the quality very impressive. On the whole, though, just as with the sports Classic Circuit, it’s impressive in a way that holds no temptation for me. I love knitting, but I am most certain that I would not enjoy knitting these projects – neither the process nor the result. I’ll stick to my admiring.