Adrian wants a knitted poncho. He had one, which he outgrew, and then another one which he also outgrew, and now I can’t find anything remotely suitable in his size. So I’ll try and knit one. I haven’t had great success with my more advanced knitting projects but a simple poncho, with a simple shape, should be the right kind of project for me.

He asked for green and blue and maybe some more colours and a snowflake pattern. I’m thinking green for the bottom half and blue for the top, and a pixelated gradient between the two, and white snowflakes on the blue.

Challenge 1: all the snowflake patterns I find are for eight-armed snowflakes, which are easy to design but not what snowflakes look like. I want anatomically correct snowflakes, more or less. Finally I found a second-hand sweater for sale on an auction site, that had six-armed snowflakes on it. The photos were sharp enough for me to copy the pattern from them. Yay!

Challenge 2: none of the pixelated gradient patterns I found look like what I want. They have a bit of a gradient but the actual transition from one colour to another is too sudden. I want something softer. I may have to make my own pattern for that.

I like mending clothes and other such things. There’s something deeply satisfying about it. It’s almost as good as making something from scratch, but with much lower effort, and it’s inherently un-wasteful.

Today, while the rest of the family are visiting Eric’s parents in the countryside, I spent half a day mending things: a hoodie, a pair of Adrian’ stretchy trousers, some tights, a pair of woollen liner gloves, and finally my autumn/winter outdoor trousers. Those last ones took a good two hours, because each leg needed two patches, and the fabric was both thick and slippery. But it felt so good to have finished them. And now they’re almost better than new!

On the train to Oslo, for a week-long ski tour.

Since this is the fourth one, I guess I can now call this my annual ski tour.

It’s a long train ride and SJ is still stuck in the previous century and doesn’t even provide wi-fi on the train. I came prepared, though, so I’m crocheting a dishcloth.

In Oslo I will meet up with the rest of the Warthog group and then we’ll all take the bus to Hemsedal, where our tour will start tomorrow.

Adrian has been walking around with a big hole in the knee of his favourite trousers. And “favourite” in this case means “he won’t wear any others until these start to smell”.

I asked if I could mend the hole. That’s not a given – he likes the holes in the toes of his socks, where his big toe can peek out.

He said yes, and asked for something green.

We decorated gingerbread cookies.

One can have too many paracord bracelets, and I think I already do, but whatever. This one is l33t green!

We made paper stars.

It’s fun to make Christmas decorations but hard to find place for them. It feels like the house is full of various crafted stars and elves and snowmen and trees, and they just accumulate with the years. The kids make new ones almost every year and don’t ever want to get rid of any of theirs. At least these small paper ones don’t feel like a huge investment so we can throw them out (or rather, recycle them) when Christmas is over.

One elbow patch done. Phew!

I like to imagine that if the designer of this cardigan had decided to add elbow patches, then they would have chosen to make them just like this.

Six pacman-shaped spider eyes and a multitude of viciously sharp teeth.

The shape of my pumpkin and some curved “scars” on it inspired an abstract design.