Continuing with the leafy embroidery on the table runner. The first leaves were all pure fantasy, but then I made an oak leaf, and now a maple, and now I’m wondering if the combination of real and fantasy leaves looks odd.

The rest of the day I spent on various errands. Threw out all the packaging from my IKEA trip, took some old stuff to the charity shop (including a children’s bicycle that was Ingrid’s first and that nobody can have used in the last 10 years at least) and other old stuff to an auction house. Also spent several hours angsting over which bushes and plants to buy for the corner I’ve dug out this summer, and finally clicked the Buy button for two Hydrangeas, plus some Rodgersia and Actaea.

The Thursday embroidery group is arranging an exhibition. I haven’t been too interested – it’s not why I’m participating in the group – but I’m happy to help fill the walls. The Stockholm embroidery, the green skirt, the black cardigan, the print + organza swirls – and the black/white/red triptych. Which I haven’t properly finished, even though the three constituent parts have been complete for months.

The ladies in charge of hanging the exhibition are doing it on Tuesday at 10. Yesterday I bought unbleached linen fabric, and today I spent the morning on putting it all together. Covered a piece of foamboard with the linen fabric, stitched the corners of the pieces to it, and attached a piece of wire for hanging.

I had hoped to find the same brick red fabric that I used in the embroidery itself, that would have looked quite dramatic. But of course the shop didn’t have it in stock anymore. Maybe it actually looks better this way.

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.

This feels nice. Just going with the flow, using whatever stitch happens to feel right at that moment.

I might need to buy some more green embroidery floss to get a bit of variety.

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.

The metro tile wall embroidery is not making me happy at all. I don’t enjoy working on it. But it’s embroidery day and I wanted to be doing something, so I made some random waves on a random thrifted towel.

The same design, three different ways of expressing it. The original sketch is from an online embroidery workshop. I liked it, but it didn’t quite fulfil the criteria, so I put it aside and came back to it later. I finished the embroideries themselves a while ago but now finally got them mounted.

1: Oriental stitch for the rectangles. Couching for the circles, using hemp string and strips of paper. Applique for the filled circle.

2: Tulle and running stitch for the rectangles. Feather stitch for the circles. Weaving for the filled circle.

3: Lattice work for the rectangles. Chain stitch and threaded running stitch for the circles. Bayeux stitch for the filled circle.

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!

Unpicked all the stitches I made at the last embroidery club session, because I really didn’t like working with this fabric. I don’t know if I’ll ever want to use the fabric for anything, but I want to reuse the thread for a new attempt.

Today was a getting things done day. Three loads of laundry, two hours of cleaning, baking hazelnut cakes, setting a bread dough, and sorting through half the drawers in one of the closets in my bedroom, finishing the embroidered name sign. None of which makes for good photos, apart from the name sign. (The hazelnut cakes taste great but look kind of bland.)

The plan is to get all the must-dos checked off the list today, and then I can go out for a photo walk tomorrow without any time pressure.