It’s hot and I have no appetite.

Leftover midsummer cake and a smoothie counts as dinner, right? At least while I’m on vacation.

I generally enjoy mending clothing. Some mending projects are creative, some are meditative, some quick and simple because I just want to get my favourite socks back into rotation.

And then there is this one. I’ve been procrastinating about it for at least a year because I just know it’s going to take forever and not be any fun.

This is a cashmere cardigan from a Hong Kong-based clothing brand. I was going to say it’s a favourite cardigan of mine but really by now I pretty much only have favourite cardigans. It’s the first and pretty much only high-end fashion item I ever bought, way back in London, and was the most expensive piece of clothing I owned for a long time. Taking inflation into account, it still might be. I just loved it from the moment I laid my eyes on it.

I’ve patched the elbows and redone the cuffs already but now the bias tape facing is completely worn through, to the point where it looks so shabby and tatty that I can’t wear it among people.

I have more of the silk fabric I used for the cuff facing. And now I’m on vacation and I have the time. So it’s time to get it done.

The problem with the silk I have is that it’s stiff, and expensive. The normal kind of material to use for facing is bias tape, cut on the diagonal, which makes it easier to shape around curves. But buying enough of the silk to cut bias tape from it would be horrendously expensive, so I have to just use normal horizontal strips. Which are being the opposite of supple and flexible here. Stiff as a stick.

And it’s so many tiny stitches. Two and a half metres, I measured the whole facing to. It’s going to take forever.

I’d be willing to throw it out and buy a new one if I could, but they don’t even make this model any more, or anything close to it, so even that isn’t an option. Just grit my teeth and get it done.

Having made three casual summer dresses all from the same pattern, making one more with sleeves (for cold season, office use) didn’t feel difficult at all. Now I wish I’d taken a close-up photo of the fabric, though. It looks nice from this distance but the colours and the pattern are stunning up close.

I was going to sew but Nysse felt like asserting his territorial claim over the materials on the dining table.

The darning here is basically rebuilding the towel, and from a practical point of view it’s probably not worth the effort, but it’s very meditative work.

We missed midsummer, but I guess this could be annandag midsommar?

Everybody gets their favourites. Devilled eggs, mini-quiches with leeks and cherry tomatoes, silltårta. And elderflower cordial and strawberries of course.

If you think the amount of devilled eggs looks a bit over the top then we agree. But our first attempt at the filling came out too runny so we had to boil more eggs and add more yolks to the filling to make it firmer. They make for excellent leftovers for breakfast, though.

Today is leaving and flying home day, so we’re not doing anything exciting. Here are some photos of our lovely hotel instead. Hotel Andreas in Kamari. Great location, wonderful environment and ambience, good beds, great service, decent breakfast.



I think we had the best room in the whole place, with a balcony facing the beautiful, lush front garden with bougainvilleas and lemon trees and cactuses and umbrella trees.

Breakfast in the garden was a very pleasant start for every day.

Boat trip to the three smaller islands next to Santorini – Nea Kameni, Palea Kameni and Thirassia.

The trip was arranged by the travel company we travelled with. Buses collected people at various points along the island and disgorged all of us at the harbour, where we were split across three boats based on our preferred language. Our boat and its two sisters were the epitome of a touristy ridiculousness, including fake masts.

Nea Kameni is the island at the middle of the Santorini caldera. It first emerged about two thousand years ago and has grown as ongoing minor eruptions have added more and more lava to it. The newer parts are still pure rock with nothing growing on them yet.

The island is small and the tourists many, so it felt like an outdoor museum of sorts, with marked paths everywhere.

In the middle of the island we could see the main crater of the volcano. It’s still active and there’s steam and smoke coming out of cracks in the rock, over on the other side where the rocks are covered with white deposits of something.

The same yellow tufts of some hardy desert plant that we saw on our hike from Fira to Oia are the first ones to spread here as well.

The second island, Palea Kameni, is so small that the boats don’t even land there. They stop a small distance away to give the tourists a chance to swim to the hot springs next to the island – where the water is rust-coloured.

The third island, Thirassia, is older – a part of the island that existed before the Minoan eruption. Old enough to have some vegetation and human habitation. The boats stopped here for lunch.

The restaurants at the bottom of the path all had very low ratings on Google Maps so we made the trek to the top. It was very, very hot and sweaty, and there was as usual no shade to be found on the way. Even though it wasn’t a long way to walk, we felt near fainting when we got to the top.


The stray cats on this island were all looking very scraggly. We missed Nysse.

The way down felt a lot easier.

On our way back to the port on Santorini we got some nice views of the villages we walked through and past yesterday.

There’s the rock of Skaros with its castle ruins in the middle, that we visited yesterday.

Layers of volcanic rock.

Today was the only day of this week for which the weather forecast promised a splash of rain in the morning. It seemed reasonable, looking at the sky, so we hung around at the hotel for a couple of hours before going out. This is our view from the hotel towards our planned walk for the day – that somewhat wooded area on the hills, between the two peaks.

But the rain kept not happening and we kept getting more and more restless, so in the end we just left anyway. Some rain won’t kill us.

The walking took us up, and up, and up some more. First in zigzags along the road, and, after the pass, along paths and stairs.


At the top of the hills, we came to the site of ancient Thera, a Bronze Age town destroyed in the volcanic eruption that destroyed most of Santorini and ended the Minoan civilization. It was amazingly well preserved – paths, walls, pillared halls, carved reliefs still fully visible.



Ingrid kindly took some photos of me. I was there, too! (Holding hard on to my hat because it was very windy up at the top.)



We took a different path down, which gave us a nice view of the road we previously walked to get up the hill.

Halfway down there was a cave with a natural spring.

We’d been wondering before why anyone would build a town at the top of the hill where there is no water, but at that time, pre-volcano, the hill was much taller so the town wasn’t at the top. So perhaps they had similar springs there.

We’re on a week’s vacation on Santorini. Today was mostly travelling, although we had some time in the evening to explore Kamari, the village where we’re staying, and its black pebble beach, and the long beach promenade.

Hoping to not get caught by another heat wave to make hiking difficult, we booked this trip for as early in the season as possible, as soon as school ended. It’s hot, but not unbearably so.

Coming here in June is also good to avoid the crowds that are sure to be here in peak season in July and August – now the restaurants are more than half empty, and there is plenty of room both on the beach and in the streets.