I took the train to work today, too tired to bike. And since I was in town, and actually have a monthly SL card, I took a detour on my way home to see a small embroidery exhibition. It was nice but much smaller than I had expected. Like, this is two of the four walls of the room, and behind me, out of view, is the other half. That’s it.

I do enjoy looking at other people’s embroidery, but also not. The finished piece is often much less interesting than the work of making it, the process of getting there. It’s more fun to look at what the others in the embroidery club are working on, to hear them tell about their choices and decisions. Even though this is the work of a professional and we’re hobbyists of no extraordinary skill.

First concert of this season’s solo piano series. Vikingur Olafsson, playing pieces in E major and E minor, by Bach, Beethoven and Schubert.

Last season, his performance of Bach’s Goldberg variations was the high point of the series for me. I was hoping for a similar experience, but most of this one was not really to my taste. Much of it was just… too much. Frantic, dramatic, all ten fingers hammering away at a breakneck pace like there’s no tomorrow.

Somehow it becomes extra intense and overwhelming in a live performance – I listened to him playing the same set of pieces at home, and it felt quite different. Maybe because there are other things that I can pay attention to at the same time.

An exhibition at Waldemarsudde, titled “In Bloom: Art and Botany” – about flowers in art. I like flowers, I like art, sounds nice. Maybe not super exciting (how exciting can a bunch of paintings of flowers be?) but pleasant, I’m sure.

How wrong I was. This was an incredibly varied and interesting exhibition, with so much more than just paintings of flower bouquets.

There were a few of those, of course. Prince Eugen, who originally had Waldemarsudde built, was fond of both gardening and painting, and some of his works introduce the theme. This first painting reminds me of one that Ingrid made, that I now realize I don’t have any photos of.

17th-century paintings of flowers were more varied than I had realized. There were paintings of individual varieties of tulips, from the tulip mania era. There were vanitas paintings to remind viewers of their mortality. There were paintings with dozens of individually identifiable species and varieties of flowers, that don’t even all flower at the same time, depicted with complete botanical accuracy

Some were cropped in surprising ways. As a photographer, one of the first things you learn is to be careful about cutting of body parts or other important parts of your subject. Do it intentionally if you want, but watch out for e.g. cropping people’s feet off. And here we have parts of a large blossom cut off. Was it actually painted like this? Was it cropped later? Is the flower behind the edge of the frame, and if yes, why? Surely if you own a painting like this, you can make sure it gets a frame that’s large enough to display all of it.

Nathalia Edenmont’s larger-than-life photos of people bedecked in flowers. Hyper-real, to the point that I started doubting whether these were even photos, or if they had been manipulated. This bring to mind 18th-century lavish court dresses, doesn’t it?

Leaving the room with paintings, there were two amazing arrangements of beaded flowers, by Georg Ragnar Levi. He is a collector of antique and modern flowers made of beads of glass, and these bouquets were made up of flowers by many different craftspeople. Just like the Dutch paintings, these have been made with great attention to botanical detail. If there are two varieties of lilies in the bouquet, then they’re not just of different colour and size, but their petals curve differently, and the proportional length of their stamens is appropriate to each one.

One room was filled with botanical books and prints, and photos of Carl von Linné’s original herbarium pages. The amount of effort that must have gone into these works is amazing.

Not just paintings and sculpture, but also embroidered works. My favourite was this one by Maja Stjärna, from a series where she has embroidered flowers on life-size canvas prints of photos of her friends.

It makes me think of tattoos. Sweden is the second most tattooed country in the world – 47% of the people have one, according to a statistic I saw. I can’t really imagine modifying my body in such a permanent way. But if I had to – gun to my head – I’d pick something floral, in a naturalistic style. Or like one of those botanical prints. Some ordinary northern European plant, like a dandelion or a cowslip, or maybe a cornflower.

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.

The younger generation (= Adrian, plus my friends’ kids of roughly similar age) went to an escape room. I wouldn’t have minded joining them – it’s been years since I did that – but groups were limited to 5 persons, so us “adults” had to find alternative entertainment.

My friend and I went to the Estonian National Museum, primarily to see an exhibition about the dyes historically used for traditional Estonian clothes. An excellent exhibition, with plenty of archive material, as well as modern artefacts to illustrate the dying process, such as indigo-dyed wool showing how later dye baths give a weaker colour, and multiple batches of yarn dyed with the same plant but with subtle variations in the process. There were videos showing just how intricate the dye preparation process could be (how did they even come up with all those steps?) and more videos with deep dives into specific garments in the museum’s archives, that showed just how connected rural Estonia was to the global dye trade even several centuries ago. We spent hours there.

There were a few other textile-oriented temporary exhibitions. One was an embroidered tapestry, which was embroidered by volunteers during 2025 to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the first Estonian-language book. The tapestry wandered throughout Estonia, different people embroidering different parts of it, and my friend even located the part that she had worked on.

(The first Estonian-language book was a protestant tract and was thus burned by the church. The oldest surviving printed material in Estonian dates from 1535.)

Speaking of firsts, one room held the first and original blue-black-white flag. It was buried at the start of the Soviet occupation, then dug up and hidden (in a farmhouse chimney) until 1991, its location known only to a handful of people through all those years.

I took a half-day again and did fun stuff after lunch instead of working. Kulturhuset (“House of Culture”) organizes free performances of various kinds in Stockholm’s parks during the summer. I went to see Pianofavoriter with Norrdans, a dance performance set to “the most over-played pieces of classical music”, at the park in Bandhagen.

That description does cover some of the pieces that they played, but far from all. I think maybe the pianist has a slightly skewed idea of just how many pieces of classical music the average person knows. (Relevant XKCD.) Yes, everybody recognizes “Für Elise” and the Moonlight Sonata. But does Norrdans truly think their audience will hear a piece by Ligeti and think “oh that old thing”? Rachmaninoff? Gubaidulina?

The live piano was the part I liked best. The dance was interesting, some pieces more than others, and did add an extra dimension, but I found it slightly difficult to focus on it with so much else going on around us.

I had the company of a friend, and we brought a picnic lunch, so I was enjoying live music in a sunny park with good company while eating a potato omelette and fresh strawberries. Overall a very good way to spend a weekday afternoon.

The end-of-term concert for Adrian’s percussion class took place on the big scene in the middle of Kungsträdgården.

A double act at the Royal Opera – Serge Lifar’s Suite en blanc followed by William Forsythe’s In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated. I’m sure I’ve seen both before, in some other combination, even though I can’t find any mention of Lifar on the blog.

Suite en blanc is a technical demonstration. It is precise, symmetrical, beautiful – but nothing more. All skill, no soul. Artful but artificial. A pas de deux ends with the two gazing soulfully into each other’s eyes – but why? Without context, feeling, connection, it’s just empty posing and prancing. It is a series of poses and movements so disconnected from everything else that it draws all attention to the artificiality of it all, that ends up highlighting how ridiculous classical ballet actually is. Yes, beautiful, demanding, impressive, but also ridiculous. When eight women in white tulle skirts walk across the stage, in the quiet between the end of one tableau and the next, the tap-tap-tapping of their shoes comes across as silly. Why not cardboard cones on their heads instead of wearing tulle skirts?

In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated is still clearly ballet (rather than modern dance) in its movements and “language” but uses them so very differently. There is a push and a pull, a raw intensity, a presence. There is classical precision, and then a subtle sinuous wave of a torso, or a hanging arm. Absolutely wonderful.

Kulturnatt Stockholm – Stockholm Culture Night.

Sensus, the umbrella organization for study circles under whose aegis our embroidery club takes place, participated in the project with a packed programme. Concerts, talks, workshops… including an embroidery exhibition and workshop that we were invited to contribute to. Members from our small club and two others hung our works in the small workshop room where we have our usual Thursday sessions.

One of the other clubs had themed embroideries only, on the theme of “sunrise”. The other had “wandering embroideries” on a couple of themes – a number of people all start work on same-themed, same-sized pieces of same-colour fabric, and then hand them over to the next person in a circular manner, until everyone has worked on every piece.

Our contribution to the exhibit was a mixed bag, which I rather like as a concept. Many embroidery exhibitions are intricate and figurative, which can certainly be impressive and interesting and beautiful, but I wouldn’t want interested newcomers to get the impression that that is the only thing that embroidery can be. I myself don’t much enjoy making those kinds of pieces. We had some figurative works, but also abstract ones, as well as clothes and accessories embellished with embroidery.

We were supposed to hang up our name signs, for a personal touch, and I had forgotten mine at home. We had plenty of materials that we’d collected for the evening’s workshop, so I sat down and made a new one, in the hour that I had between finishing hanging and before the exhibition officially opened.

I didn’t hang around while the exhibition and workshop were actually open. I heard afterwards that there were so many visitors that at times there weren’t enough seats for everyone who wanted to try it out, so I guess it wasn’t a bad thing that I wasn’t there, taking up another seat.

Instead I partook in the event offerings myself. First: K.A. Almgren silk mill, a historical silk weaving factory. The factory has its original jacquard looms from the 1860s – the roots of punch card computer programming. There’s an exhibition about the history of the factory and the people who have worked in it, as well as plenty of examples of fabulous patterned silk fabrics.

The original looms are in full working condition, and at least one person is still employed and working there as a weaver to keep the knowledge alive.

The punch card patterns for some of the more intricate fabrics could be hundreds and hundreds of cards long, each card corresponding to one weft thread.

Afterwards I walked to the shop and exhibition room of Konsthantverkarna, a crafts collective. Their current exhibition is Marie Eklund’s They’re spoon-spoons, silly!, a collection of hand-carved spoons, one crazier than the other.

Titeln anspelar på ett citat av David Bowie ”They’re shoe-shoes, silly”, vilket var hans svar på frågan om det är herrskor, damskor eller bisexuella skor han hade på sig. Marie Eklund får ofta frågan vad det är hon sysslar med egentligen. Är skedarna brukbara? Hållbara? Slöjd? Skräp? Konst? Dyra? Till för vem? För vad? Varför då? They’re spoon-spoons, silly!

The title is a play on a quote by David Bowie: “They’re shoe-shoes, silly”, which was his response when asked whether he was wearing men’s shoes, women’s shoes, or bisexual shoes. Marie Eklund is often asked what she’s doing. Are the spoons usable? Durable? Crafts? Rubbish? Art? Expensive? For whom? For what? They’re spoon-spoons, silly!

I went to see Liljevalchs’s spring art salon together with Adrian and Ingrid.

I’ve always moved through the rooms in a counter-clockwise direction, because that’s the direction that’s straight forward from the entrance. That’s put the room with the under-eighteens’ works as the first one. Ingrid and Adrian confidently steered us in the opposite direction, because that was obviously the right way to go in their mind. It does actually make more sense this way, because now we started in a spacious hall of eye-catching sculptures and large paintings.

The works at the salon are all for sale, at a price set by the artist. Some, I think, price them so as to be almost sure that they won’t sell. Others are very affordable. Some look expensive to me but then turn out to have been sold nevertheless. (There’s a board in one of the rooms with sticker dots marking what’s been sold and what hasn’t.)

One of glass sculptures above, which I rather liked, had been sold for a sweet 95,000 SEK.

This one-metre sculpture of a submarine was made of metal and wood, and had been aged underwater for three years, according to the label. (Nils Lagergren, “Belgravia”.)

I wonder how this work of neon tubes and black paint on the wall was even presented to the jury, and how it can have been transported here. (Josefin Eklund, “Mysterious goats and geometric heads”.)

There were of course not just weird sculptures but also paintings of all kinds. I liked this pair of very realistic but dreamy views of a spring forest. (Mats Nörle, “Ekbacken om våren”.)

Ingrid taught me about underpainting, and how it is often done in red or orange. (Anna-Christina Eriksson, “Picnic With a Red Cadillac”.)

I’m always curious about textile works – there’s almost always some embroidery and textile sculpture, sometimes weaving or crochet or knitting. The embroidery works usually tend to be concrete depictions of people or stories, which, yeah, I know other people like, but it’s not my thing. This year I liked this Sami-inspired piece of embroidery on tulle. (Yvonne Larsson, “Blodsband”.) There were, in general, quite a lot of Sami-themed works.

This piece was pleasing in its geometric simplicity. It looked like embroidery at first, but was acrylic paint on fabric. (Juanma Gonzalez, “Död ved ger nytt liv _ ad#07”.)

There were several intricate, lifelike bronze sculptures, including these coltsfoot flowers. (Vera Burkhalter Zornat, “Tussilago”.)

Finally, someone had painted a view of the exact same pillars of the Årstabron bridge that I photographed yesterday.