I figured it out!

The two tweaks that I couldn’t think of yesterday were (i) changing the total width of the panel and (ii) shifting things vertically.

Yesterday I tried to add increases and decreases to shift the 11 + 11 stitches in the two halves into 12 + 10 and back, to make a curve in the middle. Today I took away two stitches from one side, so the curve is between 11 + 9 stitches. That left me with a shorter stem for each leaf. To make the stem actually reach the leaf, I put the leaves vertically closer to each other. In my first attempts, there was only ever one leaf going on at a time. Now the right-hand leaf starts before the left one ends. Not only did this give me that curved vine that I was after, I also got a tighter pattern overall, with less dead space.

With the white dress done and the striped sweater feeling like a bit of a slog right now, I think I might want to start a new project. In my stash I have yarn for a green cardigan (bought at the crafts festival in October). The green colour is crying out for a greenery-inspired design – something with leaves, maybe.

I saw pictures of a knit pattern with leaves on a vine that I liked. Too bad it’s only available in a book published in the US in the 1970s. Then I saw pictures of a sweater with leaves that was kind of close to what I had in mind… and turned out to be discontinued.

Could I reverse engineer one of the leaf patterns based on the photos? How hard can it be? Knits for the smooth surfaces, purls for the bumpy parts. Increases and decreases to make them grow and shrink; cables to make lines slant and cross.

With lots of trial and error – mostly with pencil and eraser on graph paper, and a few attempts with actual yarn – I feel like I’m 90% there. It would all look smoother and tidier if I wet blocked the knit fabric but I don’t even need that now, I just want to see the shapes.

The leaves definitely look like leaves. My inspiration photos had eyelet increases like in the lower pair; I think I prefer the smooth surfaces of the upper pair.

The vine on the other hand needs more work. It’s a stick, not a vine; way too straight. I made several pen-and-paper attempts at making it curve – increase somewhere on one side while decreasing on the other – but couldn’t get it to work. Whenever I adjusted one part, it threw something else out of whack. The stem wouldn’t reach the leaf at the right row, or there wasn’t anywhere to put a decrease without distorting the entire panel.

Time to sleep on it.

Time to top up the brownie stash in the freezer again.

I have recently come to realize the awesomeness of a precision baking thermometer. The fancy recipe for wort bread strongly suggested using one to check that the bread is done, and that made it clear to me just how difficult it is to eyeball the doneness of a loaf of bread just by looking at it. (Especially with wort bread that is dark before it even goes in the oven.) When I thought it looked done, it still had a good 10 degrees to go, and that took about 20 minutes if I remember correctly. It would definitely have been underbaked if I had taken out based on just the timer and my own eyes.

Now I’m a convert. I bought the thermometer on Adrian’s request – he has a very scientific book about baking – but his baking enthusiasm comes and goes, and now I’ve using it more than he ever has. For my sourdough bread (done when I thought it was), cheesecake (done when it still looked way to liquid), karask (needed more time than the recipe said), brownie (also needed more time). So very convenient.

Jan Lundgren and Hans Backenroth at Konserthuset, playing tunes from Jan Johansson’s Jazz på svenska. Absolutely wonderful. Music that I know and love, expert musicians enjoying themselves together, and me in a front row seat. It doesn’t get more perfect than this.

It’s thawing outside and all the streets are like fields of ice, pitted and wet and treacherous.

The fight that Nysse had last week left him with a jagged wound in his right ear. Those ears are like a record of his battles. The tips of both are a bit ragged, one is split at the end, but this is the largest wound yet. I’ve been a bit worried – he hasn’t quite had the same appetite and energy as he usually does. The wound doesn’t look infected, and he doesn’t have a fever, and he is still eating and going out, so hopefully he just feels a bit off. My pet insurance company offers free online consultations with a vet, and they confirmed that all seems OK, so I guess I’ll just keep him under close observation.

I wish he could just stop fighting – but if the neighbours’ cat is trying to claim that our yard is now part of his territory, I can understand that Nysse won’t accept that.

The knitting club has started up again after a break for Christmas and New Year. The Wednesday afternoon sessions are messy in the best sense. It’s crowded, there is barely any place to put your bag down, there are multiple conversations going on at the same time, and I know the names of maybe one fifth of the people. There’s no common project or theme like we sometimes have at the embroidery club – everyone just does their thing. Which is absolutely wonderful – I can be inspired by so many different ongoing projects. Today someone was wearing a cardigan based on a pattern that I’ve been thinking about knitting, and I could talk to them about it. Someone else turned out to have Estonian heritage and was knitting with a handspun yarn from Haapsalu. Another person had made felted slippers with the same yarn that I used for mine, but gotten them more felted than I managed, so we talked about what we did differently.

Wall art at the southbound red line platform at the T-centralen station.

The suggested common theme for our embroidery group this term is “art in the Stockholm underground”, or maybe it morphed into the slightly broader “the Stockholm underground, but no train network maps, and no actual trains”.

With my and Ingrid’s upcoming trip I will miss the next two sessions, and I’m not yet done with last term’s project (which grew from one piece into a triptych because I enjoyed what I was doing). Maybe I’ll have to give this a miss.

Plenty of snow has brought plenty of birds to the feeder. This year it’s mostly blackbirds, with only occasional visits from others.

Blackbirds are not good at sharing. The main feeder is a four-sided construction, and there’s easily room for four large birds. Do they use it that way? No. Usually I see at most two birds eating, with a whole bunch hanging around and waiting for their turn: some on the feeder stand, others on the clothes drying rack, even more in the trees nearby. They don’t even wait nicely – instead they interrupt each other and chase each other away.

As the title says, I finished the skirt. I now have a warm, sturdy, colourful, pocket-equipped skirt.

This is kind of what I had in mind for the skirt that I gave up on – an irregular composition of semi-random pieces of fabric. I intentionally let the shape of the fabric pieces guide the design, rather than drawing something and then trying to make the pieces fit.

While at least two of the fabrics had a clear front and reverse side, I decided to ignore that. If the piece fit and the grain was right, then I used it regardless of which way it was facing.

This way I could make the whole skirt with very little waste. I have several larger pieces left over that could become something (throw pillows?) as well as smaller scraps for decoration, patching or applique.