I’m adding my own mends to the heirloom towel. This one will be more weaving than mending, because I hadn’t paid attention to it and didn’t see it was quite so worn. But unlike the dense fabric in the modern towels, this one is actually easy to work with. The coarser thread is much easier on the eyes.

Kind of nice but also not quite what I had hoped for. But an interesting experiment, and a useful thing to have, and I enjoyed making it, and now I’ve learned something.

I’m going back and forth about adding a closure. I was thinking a button, first, because hook-and-loop tape on this would clash too badly with the style. But I also don’t want a buttonhole. So either nothing, or maybe snaps.

Finally finishing the sweater I started in March. The last little bits are taking forever.

Out of curiosity I logged the time I spent on making this sweater. People showing off their knitted objects on Reddit sometimes say how long it took them to make the thing, and I realized that I really have no idea. Now I do! The first attempt – that I ripped up – took 23 hours. The second one that actually led to a finished sweater took 67 hours. I may have forgotten to log some small bits, so say a round seventy hours all in.

The last couple of weeks’ work hasn’t felt inspiring, just redoing this and redoing that and weaving in ends, so I’m not feeling much of a sense of accomplishment right now. And it’s not the season for woollen sweaters now, anyway. I’m close to just packing it away until November and forgetting about it.

Two more dresses based on the same basic pattern as the first one, gives me a whole three everyday summer dresses.

I tweaked the pattern slightly each time, so the dresses got closer and closer to what I like. Slightly slimmer around the upper body; slightly lower neckline. Too bad I don’t need any more, now that I’ve gotten the pattern tweaked the way I want.

My current embroidery project is a glasses case. I don’t need my glasses often at all but they still deserve a nice case.

The starting point was a technique I saw posted on Instagram, called stacked running stitch. It looks like satin stitch at first glance, but builds up very differently. Instead of making one branch at a time, the yarn goes all the way across the motif, building up all the branches simultaneously, a millimetre at a time.

Instead of something purely abstract, I did the stitching in the shape of a coral.

It sounded interesting, and was definitely interesting to work with. It took a lot more concentration than I had thought. The running stitches had to be kept straight (probably easier on a fabric with visible threads) or the lines would start to lean or curve. And I also had to think about the branching all the time, to make sure they didn’t run into each other, or all end at the same time, or all split at the same time.

The end result is perhaps technically impressive rather than beautiful. It was an interesting experiment, though. I think it might have worked better for a purely abstract design after all.

The motif on the rear is also a coral, but a quick and simple one in feather stitch. In all its simplicity I think it looks better than the laborious one on the front.

The older I get, the pickier I get. Or perhaps more charitably, the better I know my own likes and dislikes.

I’ve been trying to buy new everyday summer dresses for several years, but can’t find anything that’s to my liking. All I want is simple sleeveless knee-length dresses in cotton jersey, with a minimum of fuss. No ruffles, gathers, drapes, panels, cutouts or anything. When the weather is hot and I’m all sweaty, I want no extra seams touching me. But the current fashion is all about fussy details, and besides, jersey dresses currently tend to either be mini-short or maxi-long.

I’ve got two comfy home dresses that I actually like, both about 10 years old. In desperation I’ve bought two others – because it’s hard to get through a hot summer with just two – but they’ve both got scratchy “stuff” so I only end up wearing them in emergencies.

As usual, necessity is the mother of crafting. I bought several bolts of nice jersey fabric at the crafts fair in February, as well as some basic dress patterns.

I haven’t really sewn much clothing before. Plenty of curtains, sofa cushions, dress-up costumes etc, but nothing that actually needs to fit. One can get away with all sorts of hacks and shortcuts when sewing a wizard hat in polar fleece – but not with a dress.

The pattern looked like the clothing patterns I remember my mum tracing from Burda Moden magazines in the 1980s. Except the Burda pattern sheets had tens of items all on the same sheet, so you had to trace the ones you wanted, whereas these modern ones are apparently meant for single use. I couldn’t make myself cut up my pattern, though – because what if I want a different size or something – so I traced it onto some old plastic shopping bags.

The scary thing about sewing, as compared to knitting for example, is that once you cut, you can’t undo it. With knitting you can just rip it up and reuse the yarn, but that doesn’t really work with fabric. I like my undo buttons.

To properly sew in jersey you’re supposed to use an overlocker, rather than an ordinary sewing machine, but I’m not going to spend thousands of kronor on a sewing machine when what we have works perfectly fine. I just zig-zagged everything. The seams don’t look as professional as overlocked ones, but they’re stretchy enough to be functional, and nobody is going to inspect my seams up close.

Getting a basic dress cut out and assembled – two short shoulder seams, two long side seams – took a couple of hours. And then all the hemming and finishing took the same again. The pattern even had neckline banding. The whole thing came out looking pretty smart.

I couldn’t think of a good way to photograph the finished thing, so I’ll have to take a selfie of me wearing it when it’s warm enough.

PS: The blog archives remind me that I have actually sewn two skirts.

My hand-knitted socks are getting their first holes, with the oldest and favouritest ones going first. I saw a hole in one, which led me to check a few of the other pairs and find three or four more. All under the big toe.

For most of them I have some leftover yarn, so I can achieve some very discreet mends – which is nice when I want to wear these to work.

I’ve missed the last three meetups of my embroidery club. First we were away skiing during the spring break; then I was away for a different kind of skiing on my own; then I was travelling for work. And then one meetup was cancelled due to Easter. I thought the next one would be today, but when I turned up, there was nobody there. Either I mixed up the weeks, or they shifted everything by a week instead of skipping Easter Thursday. The arranger was away on vacation so I couldn’t get in touch with anyone, either.

I had been looking forward to this for many weeks. If the embroidery club isn’t happening, I’ll make it happen. So I went home and had my own one-woman embroidery meetup in the sofa. Put on some music, poured myself a glass of glögg that we still had since Christmas, and asked not to be disturbed.

I’m working on a glasses case. It seems fitting, somehow, to embroider something for the glasses that I need for embroidery.

Most of the maths I did in school was maths for maths’ sake. Brain training, preparing for higher studies, etc. I’ve had very little use for it in everyday life. So when I do need it, it’s kind of gratifying. Today I used the properties of similar triangles to figure out sizing for my shawl. If I have 9 full pattern repeats after using 70% of the yarn, how many pattern repeats can I get if I use all of it? There is a red insert after every pattern repeat, and the last insert is a special one. Will the special one be the 9th, 10th, or 11th?

I’m done with the Sweatrrr body and more than halfway with the left sleeve.

The pattern has a dark red rolled hem at the bottom of the body. But the edge doesn’t know it’s only supposed to roll the red bit, and rolls quite a lot more. I don’t like this look at all. Not sure what I can do about it, though.