It feels like the houses are taking forever. I think all I did today was tiny cross-stitch windows. They need to be aligned and more or less equally sized, and they’re small and fiddly. But they’re necessary, to hold down the long stitches of the house facades.

Staying at Duottar for another night. Today was planned as a slack day, in case we needed to adjust our route or timing due to the weather – or to be used for a day trip. In the end it was a bit of both. The day started out very windy, continuing on from yesterday, so we mostly stayed in the huts until lunchtime.

In the middle of the day we had a couple of fine hours of beautiful sunshine, and went out on a small circuit on the nearby lake. On the other side of the lake we took off our skis and climbed to the top of the (very small) peak to get some views.

It was rather satisfying to get some good glide going. Swish, swoosh, across a flat lake, with the wind at our backs and the sun brilliant above us.

More dark clouds were piling up when we were turning back, and the wind picked up again soon after, so our outing remained short.

The rest of the day we just puttered around our huts. I think many in the group appreciated the rest. There isn’t much space nor comfortable furniture in the huts. You can lounge in your bed, or on one of the small, hard chairs.

I had packed some knitting, given the more generous “luggage allowance” with the pulks. I finished a pair of socks this morning and wound the yarn for the next pair. A ball of sock yarn weighs 100 g, so the two didn’t make my bag much heavier.

At one point we took the time to dig out another stall in the outhouse. When we got here, only one of the stalls was clear of snow. Two others were full of snow inside, and the fourth had a large drift in front of the door. But we were getting low on toilet paper in the one that we were using, so it was worth digging out a second one.

When there’s nothing else to do, there’s almost always water to melt and boil. It’s the first thing we do in the morning, and likewise the first thing we start when we get into a hut in the afternoon. There’s almost always two pots of water on the stove and a bucket of snow next to it.

Had I been on my own, I’d most likely not have bothered with the boiling. Fresh snow, freshly melted, is good enough for me. But I understand that the guides feel like they need to be more responsible with the group’s hygiene.

During this trip I’ve learned that there is technique and tricks to melting snow for drinking water. Sure, you can just shovel snow in a pot and put it on a stove, but there are ways be efficient about it.

Firstly and most importantly, don’t start with snow in an empty pot – you want some water at the bottom. Otherwise the first snow to melt will immediately boil and evaporate, which is a waste. So you prime the pot with the last dregs from your thermos.

Secondly, the first batch of ready, boiled water goes not in the thermos but in ordinary bottles, which you then put in the bucket of snow waiting to be melted next. This way you start warming up the snow while also cooling your drinking water. The thermoses you fill last.

And, of course, don’t leave any of your leftover water in the kettle, like some fool had done, because by the time the next guests get there it will be a solid chunk of ice, spiced with dead flies, which you can’t even pour out because it’s larger than the opening of the kettle.

On any normal trip we’d also spend a fair bit of time cooking. This time we had packed, frozen meals for all dinners, and the guides took care of breakfast porridge. I’ve never eaten as well on a hut-to-hut tour, with as little work.

Right sleeve of sweater. I liked the way it looked, rolled up around that little ball of yarn.

The sweater body is finished, and now drying after I wet blocked it.

The colourful stripes are as crazy and colourful as I pictured them. The lines between the light gray and the almost-but-not-quite-the-same light gray were not planned. I guess I got two different batches of the gray yarn. Given how the sweater is constructed, I can’t even easily avoid them by alternating the two skeins. With the line at the top, for example, I actually started the knitting there, and knitted first in one direction (downwards in the photo) and then re-joined the yarn when the rest of the body was done and knitted upwards to make that shaped section.

But I guess if I’m doing stripes anyway, what’s a few extra ones?

Or, maybe, if they do end up bothering me, I could use duplicate stitch to embroider a thin line there with the crazy yarn and pretend that it’s part of the design.

I had the honour of mending one of Eric’s sweaters. His style is definitely more subdued than mine, so there was no doubt that I would aim for a discreet mend. Then I found a near-perfect yarn to match the sweater, and while the result is not invisible, it blends in pretty darn well. I guess if I had endless time and infinite patience, I could have done something even less visible with Swiss darning, but with these tiny stitches? No thank you.

It’s tricky when the yarn thickness doesn’t quite match. Taken singly, the yarn was too thin. Held double, it was thicker than the original, so I made my grid at half the density of the original stitches. Which afterwards turned out to be a bit too sparse, making the result look like a basket rather than an even weave. You can see it in the photo below, on the left side of the mend, if you look really carefully. I went back and wove in more vertical threads between the existing ones here and there – I’m about halfway done in the photo, starting from the right. Inserting extra warp threads was more work than if I’d had them there from the start. But I don’t know how I could have gotten the density right without experimenting.

Made a start at the Stockholm embroidery at the embroidery club meeting today.

Yeah, this will take a while.

I’m using Bayeux stitch to fill all that space for the houses. I learned that stitch here at the embroidery club, and I really don’t know what I would have done here instead if I didn’t know this one. It fits so perfectly.

Getting ready to start working on the Stockholm-themed embroidery at the embroidery club tomorrow. I haven’t done much figurative embroidery, but why not try.

Just choosing something to represent Stockholm was hard. I wanted a concrete picture of Stockholm, not something symbolic (like the subway map). I wanted something personal but also general: an image that would be clearly recognizable as Stockholm by not just me (not a view of our house, for example) but at the same time I don’t want a generic postcard.

In the end I settled on using this old photo of mine of Karlberg. The combination of earth-toned buildings, water, and greenery all together feel like quintessential Stockholm to me.

The group’s suggested end date for the project is mid-May. I’m pretty sure I’m not going to be done by that time. The marked area on the fabric is 30 by 45 cm. I get a lot for free from the background fabric – I won’t be embroidering much on the sky or the water – but that’s still quite a lot of fabric to cover with stitches. But I’d rather make something that I can be proud of, perhaps even hang on a wall, than focus on a deadline. If it takes me until Christmas – well, then it does.

Buying fabric for my next embroidery project.

The stitch sampler is more or less done. Our next shared project will be a free embroidery on the theme of “Stockholm”. I have some ideas but they need to ferment a little while longer before I can make decisions and buy materials.

For today I’m just embroidering nothing in particular. I have a second-hand pillowcase that I bought at a charity shop for 30 kr that I’ve been decorating with simple, meditative running stitch. It might turn into a project bag when I feel done with it.

I also did some work on the self-portrait I started some years ago. Mouths are tricky.

I bought scraps of a nice wool fabric a while ago, with the plan of turning them into a skirt. Decent-sized pieces that had been pinned in the shape of a ladies’ suit on a shop window mannequin. I was picturing a scrappy, patchwork-y skirt, pieced together from differently shaped parts.

I quickly realized I’d need to bind all the edges, or the fabric would fray with all the handling. I struggled to find a bias tape that would work with the fabric – the tapes I looked at were too red, or too purple, or too muddy brown. Then I found this linen bias tape which I thought looked decent. But now I think it was a mistake – it’s too bright and sticks out too much. Should have gone with one of the darker colours after all.

Next problem – the bound edges were all stiff, which I hadn’t expected. When I started assembling the pieces, the fabric didn’t drape any more but sort of stood stiffly.

And the pieces I cut weren’t any good, either. I didn’t achieve a patchwork-y look at all. I didn’t want to bind and sew too much, and didn’t want to waste fabric, either, because I didn’t have very much of it. So I made the pieces quite large. Put together, they just looked boring.

At this point I can’t see any way of rescuing this and making anything I’d actually want to wear from what I have in front of me, short of undoing absolutely everything and starting all over. And even then I’m not sure I could fix all the problems. This is no fun at all any longer, and while I don’t like throwing away things that could be something, I’m not going to force myself to work on something I won’t enjoy. This goes into the recycling bag.