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 have plans, and I have a yarn – I can start knitting!

There’s a whole chunk of it done already, even though what I have doesn’t much look like a sweater. I’m knitting it sideways, and not starting either in the middle OR at the side seam, so what I have is sort of random-looking pieces. A long strip of the left side, from the front hem over the shoulder and down to the back hem, and then a big chunk of the front, with the neckline curve at the right side of it. Now to finish the front, then knit the back, and then they’ll join up again at the right shoulder and continue towards the side from there.

Planning the details for the “sweater with the funky yarn”. I couldn’t find a pattern that I liked, so I’m making it up myself based on bits and pieces of different patterns.

Sewing patterns can have curves all over the place, for armholes and sides and necklines and what not. But knitting patterns ultimately tends to boil down to straight lines and triangles. Making things fit is about adjusting the angles and lengths of those lines. “Decrease x stitches on every n:th row”, and you just pull those numbers up and down to fit.

For a curve, you just need many short, straight, angled lines after each other. Knitting is inherently made up of discrete stitches, after all. Even if it looks like a continuous curve, it isn’t. You want a neckline curve? It’ll still have to be broken down into “decrease 10, then decrease 7, then 4” etc. (I’m postponing thinking about the details of this neckline for now.)

Went to my favourite yarn shop and bought some undyed wool yarn to combine with the funky one. I think this combination might work out.

The yarn weight isn’t a perfect match – the funky one takes up more space than I expect based on its looks. With the same needles for both, the funky one bulges out a bit. I could try and buy more varieties of gray wool yarn from the internet, until I find a better match, or I can just make do. For the top half of the swatch I tried using 4 mm needles for the funky one and 4.5 mm for the gray one, and that looks pretty even.

I found this funky vintage wool yarn at Tradera (Swedish ebay) and bought it because I liked the look of it. After winding it, I still like the look of it. (Which is not always the case – most of the ugliest yarn I ever bought is still in my yarn stash.)

Knitting it into something that looks good will require some more work, though. The yarn varies not just in colour but also in thickness, and it’s got a kind of a curl to it, like it’s been spun around a wire that’s later been removed. In straight up stocking stitch it just made stripes, not the variegation I had expected, and the stitches looked uneven. It really didn’t do the yarn justice.

So I tried all sorts of other things, to mix up the stripes: combining it with a solid colour in slip-stitch patterns; slip-stitch patterns with just the funky yarn, both on stocking stitch and on reverse stocking stitch. And then – just simple garter stitch, which worked better than any of the other stitches. Broke up the stripes just enough to soften the impression, but without muddling it all up (like what happened with the 2nd attempt of combining it with black).

Tried and mostly failed to get a photo of myself and my newly finished cardigan, without too many of the bathroom fixtures or other crap in view. The more I tried, the worse the results got. After a while I was overthinking it so much that I sometimes didn’t even manage to get into position before the timer triggered. I think it just isn’t doable.

The cardigan fits super well, though!

The last decent-sized bundle of yarn I had in my yarn drawer turned out to be unusable for the purpose I bought it for. First it turned out to be low quality. Badly cleaned, with ridiculous amounts of plant matter in it. And I ran into three knots and breaks in just two hanks of yarn.

Plus then I found out it was scratchy, too. I had barely cast on knitted a couple of rows when it was already making my fingers sore. If I can’t even stand to hold the yarn while knitting, I’m not going to be wearing anything I make from it. Bummer. It was such a nice colour!

Shawls are perfect background knitting. No need to try anything on, no ripping up sleeves because they fit wrong. No swatching to get the right gauge. Just knit.

This one was lovely to knit. The yarn was super soft and cosy, and the pattern was interesting. Simply brioche knitting all the way, with two increases on every right-side row, randomly placed. Not too much thinking, but also not completely mindless. Perfect for commuting, meetings, watching TV etc.

The only bad thing about it is that I ran out of yarn so I had to stop.