Planning for the next knitting project; a sweater/jumper. I’ll be using the same yarn as for the fiery cardigan but in a different colour. I’m thinking of going up a step in needle size to get a slightly looser, thinner fabric – which means knitting a new gauge swatch. For the non-knitters, a gauge swatch is a small, square “trial” piece that you knit with the exact yarn and needles you plan to use for your real project, to figure out how many stitches you get per 10 cm.

For some reason I find these incredibly, unbelievably boring. I truly hate knitting gauge swatches. It makes no sense – if I was knitting a dishcloth of the same size, I doubt I’d had any negative feelings about it. It’s just knitting! Which I like! Perhaps it’s the inherent uselessness of them. You make one, do the measuring and counting, and then just… put it away to gather dust forever, or rip it up.

Still, starting knitting without swatching and then having to rip up the real thing after realizing it doesn’t fit – which would mean a lot more wasted work – would be even more annoying. So I grit my teeth and get it done.

Done with the cardigan, I need a new knitting project. This will become a shawl.

It took me four attempts to get this far before I was satisfied.

The first time I wasn’t happy with the tension. The pattern suggests 3.75 mm needles which may exist in the US but generally aren’t available in Sweden. I tried 4 mm needles, but the result was too loose and floppy.

The second time I wasn’t happy with the long edge. The pattern suggests an edge treatment that would look good in theory, but in my hands it came out too tight, so the whole long edge pulled in way too strongly.

The third time I wasn’t happy with the coloured inserts. I tried a green alpaca yarn that looked good in perfect lighting but didn’t stand out enough when seen from a distance. The red works much better.

A knitting project involves so many choices, and for every one of them I can make the wrong decision. Sometimes it doesn’t matter much but other times I can see pretty clearly that I’m on a route where I won’t be happy with the end result.

It’s a skill in and of itself, I guess, to notice which decisions matter most, and to spot problems early. The worst knitting decision I made and committed way too strongly to was choosing a pattern that didn’t work for me, with the first green cardigan, and that one was so bad that it literally took me years to get past it, because it killed all my joy and confidence. A traumatic knitting experience. But that one was so tangled up with other decisions – about yarn and needles and sizing – that it was hard to pinpoint the actual problem. And who knows, maybe I was doing something wrong that I could have fixed to make it work.

All done and finished! And I’m really pleased with the final result. Fits well, looks great, feels soft and warm. And the colour fade looks awesome.

I started a habit of exercising for at least 15 minutes a day, keeping it small and achievable to help make it happen. But the low target actually ended up being counter-productive. 15 minutes was so short that even an energetic walk to and from the supermarket was enough, and after a while I was checking the box even though I wasn’t even getting my pulse or breathing up.

New habit: at least 20 minutes of strength training on weekdays when I’m not in the office, or 30 minutes of brisk walking otherwise.

I’ve also been avoiding strength training for a while because the mere idea of stripping off my warm layers in order to change into workout clothes has been unpleasant. But now that I’m doing it again, I was reminded that the workout itself gets me nice and warm, and the effect stays with me for some while after the workout. Net net exercising makes me warmer, as long as I can get over the initial threshold. As with most “hard” things, I just need to get past that initial resistance, and remember how good it will feel afterwards.

The photos of dumbbells are boring, I know, but I did a proper workout, with weights and everything, this week again, and I’m rather proud of that, and I want to revel in that pride for a moment.

Maybe next time I’ll bring out the tripod and try to get some more interesting workout photos.

My dentist had some strong things to say about the state of my teeth at my last visit a couple of weeks ago. Flossing was yet another habit that I didn’t manage to keep up with when my energy levels dipped during the last quarantine year.

I’m working on forming new habits. Started flossing every morning – currently on a 20-day streak. Switched to a toothpaste that foams less so that I don’t have to rinse after brushing. Trying to also use mouthwash some time during the day but struggling to actually remember to do it.

It’s going to take me forever to get the old habits out of muscle memory. Every single time, my hand reaches for the old toothpaste that Eric still uses. Every single time, I reach for a cup to get water afterwards. I do remember, but the hand is faster than the conscious brain.

I attended beginners’ class in freeform crochet today. It was less structured than the embroidery course and more just “let’s try a few things”.

I think the longer format of the embroidery course suited me better – it gave me enough time to actually get a feeling for the process, what directions it could be taken and what angles I could try. But this was also fun. I’m already getting ideas for projects.

The outcome of an evening of freeform crocheting looks much messier than the result of an evening’s embroidery.

The moment I saw it in all its shiny, red glory, I knew I wanted it, and when it turned out to fit me in size and cost no more than two lunches, I bought it without any hesitation.

Afterwards I started wondering if it screams too much midlife crisis and a desperate clinging-on to youth. Next thing, I’ll be wearing a skin-tight leopard-print dress. (No.)

Then I told myself to stop worrying and just enjoy it. So that’s what I was doing today.

Our homework for the embroidery course this week was to take a stitch and play around with it – explore and experiment. The teacher set very low expectations because many in the group are beginners, and I knew I wanted to do more than that.

I had bought the book that she based the course on and found a nice idea there. Take a square of fabric, divide it into smaller squares, and fill each one with a different variation of the stitch. The book suggested 3×3 squares and that seems very reasonable. But at the same time… if I only do nine variations on the same stitch, I’m not going to get any really interesting results. I need to get the obvious ones out of the way and get to the point where I need to push myself. 4×4 would be much better. But I decided to go all in and do 5×5 squares. Kind of going overboard, I know, but I think it’ll be good.

I’ve been spending a lot of time on it every evening this week. It’s a fair amount of work, but it’s also very relaxing. There are no expectations. I won’t be hanging it on the wall or on a piece of clothing or anything else. Nobody is going to look at it for more than a minute except for myself. Nobody will care how tidy the rear side is. (It totally isn’t. I wasted no time on fastening the ends at all. It’s all loose bits of yarn all over.)

Long stitches. Short stitches. Stitches of even lengths and of uneven ones. Lined up and offset. Thin yarn and thick yarn and even thicker yarn. Smooth cotton and fuzzy wool. Straight lines and curves. One colour, two colours, a gradient.

The embroidery course I signed up for as one of my habits and commitments started today. The theme of the course is “free-form embroidery”, i.e. embroidery without a pre-prepared design. Making things up as you go.

For this first session (out of five) our teacher threw us in at the deep end and tasked us with embroidering a self-portrait. Take a selfie with your phone and then translate it into embroidery – as if we were drawing a picture with needle and thread instead of a pencil. The task felt very challenging beforehand, since I don’t think of myself as particularly good at drawing even with a pencil. But we were there to have fun and, as the teacher kept reminding us, it’s not like middle school where we will be graded on our work. Nobody will check the tidiness of the rear of our embroidered piece; nobody will comment if the stitches are uneven.

We had just over an hour of stitching time and by the end of it I just had a few contours. No eyes, no mouth, no hair. But it’s clearly the beginnings of a face, and a reasonable likeness – if a stranger had to pick the model out of the whole class, they would likely pick me. So I’m pretty pleased with it. I had expected to get much further in the time we had. I’ll have to finish it at home.