I’m going about knitting this white thing in not quite the conventional way. Usually when you knit a sweater, you finish the body first and then do the sleeves. There’s even something called “second sleeve syndrome”, where the knitter loses their enthusiasm when there’s just the one sleeve left to knit.

With this white yarn, I’m not sure how far it will last me, and I have no way to get more. When the yarn runs out, the garment is done, no matter where that is. Finishing the sleeves was thus a priority because I definitely want it to have full-length sleeves.

Will the remaining yarn be enough for a dress, as I hope? Or do I need to change my plan and aim for a sweater? Maybe I can get it to stretch longer by combining it with some other yarn, in which case the garment doesn’t need to be done when the white yarn runs out?

I’ll knit to a point where I definitely need to make a decision, and then there will be a lot of weighing and measuring and calculating and geometry. But not now. Now I can just enjoy the knitting.

Finished the embroidery on the long black cardigan. Even took the time to sew down all the ends with sewing thread so that I can allow it to flap open and the inside to become visible without being embarrassed about it.

Just after finishing it, I couldn’t decide whether it was done or needed more. Should I go over each line again, doubling its thickness, to give it more oomph? Adrian suggested adding leaves to the vines.

Now that it’s rested for a while (I’m catching up with the blog two weeks later) I do like the way it came out. It’s hitting just the right balance between restraint and wildness.

Simple stem stitch all the way, with wool thread. Two threads held together, of different colours, so the colour shifts slightly with each stitch. Greens at the bottom, fading to yellows in the middle and oranges and reds towards the top.

Today is World Embroidery Day. No more basement cleaning – I spent the whole day embroidering.

I have this long black cardigan that I bought online, second hand, a few years ago. Great quality, 100% wool, fits me perfectly – but it is so black. I’m not sure if I’ve worn it a single time, because I feel so dull and boring and washed-out in it. The plan has been for several years now to add colour to it, and I even had an idea for how that would look. I just hadn’t gotten around to it.

That wide unused space in the middle of my bedroom? Turned out to be a great place for planning and sketching out a large embroidery project. Spread it out without running out of table space; walk all around it without navigating around chairs and other furniture. I rather like working on the floor.

I was going to take a photo and then scribble on it digitally, but it was easier to “sketch” using contrasting sewing thread on the cardigan directly, and then take a reference photo of that.

Then I got stitching! Enjoyed stitching for the whole day, and was done with half of my design by the end of it.

I got my shelves built yesterday. Nice, today I can screw them in place and then tidy up the rest of the basement and be done with it!

Nope. Just these shelves took all day.

What I didn’t take into account:

The time it took to empty the shelves of, among other things, nearly one hundred jars of jam, and move it all out of the way. And then move it back again afterwards.

The time it took to buy more timber so that I could adjust the shelves because, while I had measures the length and the width very carefully, I had not taken into account the fact that screw holes can’t be drilled just anywhere.

The time it took to drive to the DIY shop yet again because it turned out that I did not own a wrench. What kind of household doesn’t have a wrench? This one, until now.

The time it took to drive to IKEA to buy cross braces for the shelves. Their apparent stability until now has been a mirage; the moment I started moving them around, they wobbled and wanted to collapse on the diagonal. Seriously, so much driving today.

How hard it is to move heavy shelving units with just one person.

How awkward it is to assemble a shelving unit in a room where it just barely fits. I’m glad it fit at all, I’m not sure what I would have done otherwise.

Anyway, it’s all in place now. The shelves are fit for purpose, sturdy and stable. The doorway is clear. The jam jars are sorted by content, and so are the paint buckets.

Back to the basement. The focus today is on making more shelves for the shelving units in the inner room in the basement.

I’ve been told that the basement as a whole was built to house a previous owner’s taxi business. The main area of the basement was used as a garage, and this inner room was probably the only actual storage space. We haven’t had a car in here for years; it’s all storage now. This inner room is particularly cramped, and it’s hard to even get things in and out because of how stuff is partially blocking the doorway. The shelves look like they’ve been thrown up without any long-term plan, and the space is very inefficiently used.

Two of the shelving units look identical to the IKEA Hejne series, which we also have many metres of in the main area. But… either IKEA has slightly changed the dimensions in the decades that have passed since this was built, or this is a very close imitation by some other firm. Because the new shelves are just slightly off and do not fit. If I want shelves, I need to build my own.

Step one in my plan was to buy a drill, but in my cleaning and sorting of the basement, I found one. It’s a cheap model and not what I would buy – hence why it’s been lying unused. (Eric had a much better one.) But given the choice between this for free or a better model for plenty of money, this is absolutely good enough.

New step one: get the drill into a usable state. The plastic had leaked some sort of substance making it all sticky and gooey. Soap and water didn’t help. I tried cleaning it with gasoline, and that got the orange parts clean, but the black still felt disgusting. Tried acetone, and that started dissolving the plastic itself. Finally I oiled it in with paraffin oil, let it rest, and then washed it again with soap and water. And now it’s all good!

I also found a workbench in the basement. This is like a treasure hunt in my own basement. Again a cheapish model, and again it needed some oiling to make the screws run smoothly, but at zero kronor spent, a total steal. No more hunching over a step stool for sawing and drilling!

Step the next was buying timber. This is when I really wished the IKEA ready-made shelves had fit. The cost of the materials on their own was four or five times that of the finished product from IKEA. It’s just cheap pine, but if every little bit costs 50 to 70 kr and I need six per shelf then I’m quickly up at 1500 kr for four shelves. And that’s not even including the screws. I don’t know how IKEA do it.

I got tons of mending and alterations done today. A headband, a pair of trousers, an oven mitt, a t-shirt – and a sweater.

I bought this lovely wool sweater a few years ago. I love the design, and the fit, and the feel of the fabric, and yet I’ve barely worn it.

First I tried wearing it in early autumn, because of the holey design, but it was too warm. All right, 100% wool, soft and warm, perfect for the cold season, then? Well, possibly for a few days when the temperature is just right, but not when the weather gets colder, because the sweater can’t be combined with anything else. I can’t wear anything underneath because everything shows in the “keyhole” in the middle of the chest. It looks lovely in theory but is so impractical.

After a few attempts to wear it, the sweater went to the mending and alterations pile. I had vague thoughts of filling in the keyhole somehow, perhaps crocheting something? In a wonderful coincidence, another one of today’s alteration projects was a hiking t-shirt in gray merino wool, with too-narrow sleeves. I cut off its sleeves, leaving me with a sleeveless, hopefully more wearable t-shirt – and two small pieces of thin, gray wool fabric, which matched the sweater almost perfectly in colour. Ta-da! One t-shirt sleeve made a perfect patch for the keyhole. It almost looks like it could have been made this way.

Still waiting. The knits are still far from dry. The weather has been humid, it’s been raining on and off, and this is taking forever.

Both my bigger knitting projects reached a point where they need blocking, so I’m blocked from working on both of them.

The red cardigan I finished and blocked once already, two weeks ago, but realised that it grew more vertically than I had expected, so it was too long. I ripped back all the way to the top of the waist increases and re-did it. Nobody wants a badly fitting cardigan.

The white yoke of a dress is also ready for a size check, now that I’ve reached the bottom of the yoke and split it into sleeves and body. I followed the sizing instructions in the pattern very closely, but my previous knits using this pattern have all come out too large on the first attempt, and everything is pointing towards this being the case again.

I have finally made a start on a project with the white yarn. I’ve been vacillating on what to make out of it, because it’s a little bit tricky to work with, and because I don’t want to waste it.

The decision is never going to get any easier, so I just bit the bullet and got started. Either it will work out, or it won’t, and I can’t find out which it will be without just doing it.

I’m aiming for a dress, after all. The top is going to be based on the Sweatrrr pattern. I’ve already made three sweaters based on this pattern and here I am, using it again. It’s just perfect. I like the clever shoulder construction, and it has fit me perfectly every time.

The main part of the red cardigan is all done – yoke, body, sleeves, neckline, bottom hem. Just missing the button bands. First it needs to be blocked, though, which I’ve done, just waiting for it to dry.

The angle of the yoke looks different from photos of cardigans with a similar construction, which makes me concerned that it won’t fit well. I’ll only be able to judge the fit properly when I can button it. It’s looked perfectly OK on me when I’ve tried it on and just held the front edges closed, and the maths and measurements all add up, so it should be OK. Still, I’m holding off with weaving in all the ends until I can confirm it for certain.