The cardigan is proceeding well. I’ve passed the armhole bind-off and now I’m continuing with the back, while the two front parts wait their turn. Meanwhile the knitting looks like a torture device, with cables and needles sticking out everywhere.

Knitting a cardigan from the top down sounded simple, but turned out hard to get right.

Knitting a cardigan from the bottom up sounded intimidating, but has thus far been easier. Although, the part that sounds intimidating is the assembly and of course I still have that ahead of me.

The previous pattern I attempted had a lacy yoke that I just couldn’t size correctly. Only when most of the body was done could I see properly whether the yoke fit or not. (The answer: not.) And by then it was too late to do anything about it.

This cardigan (Drops 88-4) is also hard to try on when it’s hanging in half-finished parts. But what I can do is lay the parts flat on top of an existing cardigan to check the size and shape of them. And that looks promising!

Pasha looks like a bland, white lump, but tastes delicious. (Not unlike other desserts and puddings, to be fair. How appetizing does panna cotta look, really?) It’s my favourite part of Easter.

Lemon meringue pie, which we also made for Easter, can be so lemony and intensely sweet that after a small slice my body shouts “enough”. But pasha is so refreshing and un-sweet that it almost doesn’t feel like dessert.

Estonian quark is grainier than the Swedish Kesella and fatter than Keso. This year’s tweak to the recipe was to get the best of both by combining them: Kesella for the creaminess, and Keso (passed through a sieve) for texture. This worked out great; I’ll be doing that again next year.

Raisins have always been a part of my pasha, but next year I think I might skip them. They are the least interesting part, adding nothing but sweetness. Maybe dried cranberries could work?

Pasha was always served on its own when I was a child. Nowadays we eat it with raspberry coulis.

Traditions tend to accumulate. Every item is important for someone. Our Easter food traditions are nearly as many as for Christmas.

Easter eggs are a must, both the painted, boiled kind that originally come from hens and the painted, cardboard kind that hide candy inside. And devilled eggs as well.

One year my mum made paella for us at Easter; the kids loved it and now they ask for it every year.

For dessert, pasha is an important tradition for me, and Ingrid and Eric both love lemon meringue pie.

Speaking of eggs, we talked about egg knocking, and soon Adrian and Ingrid had planned an entire tournament for our eggs. Our six eggs were unsatisfyingly few, so we painted some more. They painted one each to bring the total up to eight, and I painted a referee. The referee got a beard, so I now have a skägg-ägg to go with my vägg-ägg and hägg-ägg.

I thought my puzzle was so obvious but it took a lot of hints for the rest of the family to solve it.

What would Easter be without painted Easter eggs? Nothing, that’s what!

Ingrid had a theme in mind for her eggs, and I also found inspiration, so we got to work.

Adrian quickly finished his first egg but then struggled to find ideas for the next one. Instead he painted the newspaper protecting the kitchen table, and then got caught up in some article.




Finally I suggested that he just pick a colour and start putting some paint on the egg, and that was enough to get him unstuck.

He usually makes abstract designs on his eggs, and today was no exception. This is him with a dark egg that he energetically splatters with small speckles for a starry-sky effect.

My eggs this year are a picture puzzle, but it only works in Swedish. I made a “vägg-ägg” and a “hägg-ägg”. (Vägg means “wall” and hägg means “bird cherry”.)

We usually go to Uppsala and my mum and brother for Easter. But with all the government recommendations to stay at home, not travel, especially not from Stockholm to other parts of the country, not meet people, especially older people… that’s not happening.

My usual default solution for long weekends is to go out for a walk. Today we went to Tyresta, back to that north-eastern corner of the national park where we camped last summer. The walk to lake Långsjön and back is picturesque and varied and not too long, and there’s a fire place at a beautiful spot on the lake shore where we could heat our lunch. It’s somewhat harder to get to than the area around the main park entrance in the west, and it doesn’t have any of the super accessible stroller-friendly paths, so I was thinking it would be less crowded.

“Less crowded” maybe it was, but definitely not “not crowded”. Dozens and dozens of families had obviously found themselves in the same situation as us, and come to the same conclusion as us. The parking lot at the park entrance was completely full. Luckily there was another parking lot just a kilometre before it, where we got the last but one spot. (Technically we were probably outside the parking area, but the ground was flat and not in a shrubbery, so it worked.)

The resting place with its shelter and fire place was of course full of people as well. But again we were lucky to arrive a bit later than a large group who were mostly done grilling their sausages, so Eric found room for our “hike bombs” at the edges of the fire. (More good luck for us in that someone had brought their own firewood, because the park’s official firewood box was completely empty.)

On our way back we had an Easter egg hunt. I hid eggs for Ingrid on one side of the path, and she hid eggs for Adrian on the other. We’ve done this in our own garden several times, but there aren’t that many good places to hide colourful eggs in a bare, early-April garden, so this was a lot more fun. Under roots and under rocks and under twigs and moss. I wish I had thought to take close-up photos.

Ingrid and Adrian are both in a phase where they enjoy each other’s company. Well, Adrian has always enjoyed Ingrid’s, but right now she enjoys his as well, which isn’t always the case. Lots of silly jokes. It always makes me happy to see and hear that.

Now that it’s spring and the weather outdoor is inviting and pleasant, Adrian wants to cycle. He’s outgrown his bicycle, though, and cycling on a too-small bike is not very comfortable.

We took the train to town last week to see if we could find something at Cykelåtervinningen, a second hand bicycle shop, but our timing was not the best. They only had bikes at the extreme ends of the quality scale left in his size (24 inches) – no-gear bikes with rusty scratches, and mountain bikes with more gears than I have toes and fingers – so we came home empty-handed. (Nothing wrong with many gears, but Adrian wants a back-pedal brake, and you won’t find that on a mountain bike. And they tend to be expensive.)

Yesterday we found a bike on Blocket that both looked good and seemed suitable. We met the seller the same evening and came home with a shiny new bike, barely used.

Today, of course, he wanted to cycle. Unfortunately Ingrid is completely bikeless right now, because her bike got stolen last summer. (She actually got two bikes stolen within less than a week, because she left them outside at night… so we didn’t want to buy her a new one. If she wants one, she can earn money for it herself.) But she’s now tall enough that her next bike might be a full-sized one.

We ended up with a whole chain of bike switches. Adrian took his new bike, but everyone else got something they don’t normally ride. Ingrid rode mine; I took Eric’s; Eric took his recumbent bike.

After adjusting the seat to the lowest possible height, Eric’s bike was about the right size for me. But I was really surprised about how “off” the whole geometry felt. The seat was too far to the front and the pedals too far back, and the seat angle felt wrong. Pretty uncomfortable, on the whole.

We cycled to Vällingby, just to have a destination of some kind. Once there we bought ice cream, after which we would “just browse” the bookshop for a moment but bought three beautiful jigsaw puzzles, two books and one GeoBender puzzle. And then had a lovely cycle ride back through the spring sunshine.

I had two African violets, both gifts from Ingrid. Apparently they like what they’re getting in my window, because they’ve grown. Both had branched, and the branches were leaning way out over the edges of the pots.

When I sorted them all out, it turned out that the two had turned into five and a half. The half was so puny-looking that I threw it out, but the other five all got new soil, so hopefully they will keep growing.

Today promised beautiful weather, warm and sunny, so I took the day off and went walking.

I have quite flexible working arrangements and this has always been possible, but I’ve almost never taken advantage of it. Somehow taking a day off feels like a smaller step when I’ve already been working from home anyway, with my afternoon walking and cycling breaks.

After a longish break from walking the Sörmlandsleden, I did another section today. I’ve done all the easy-to-reach low-numbered sections. The ones ahead of me now cannot easily be reached with public transport, and some cannot even be reached by car. The best way to walk them would probably be multi-day hikes. But I only have one day, so I just simply walked section 12 twice. There and back again.

Section 12 starts near Järna, in an old iron mining district. For the first kilometer or two, the woods are pockmarked with small water-filled mining pits, most just a few metres across. There were several informational plaques here and there as well. I skimmed a few; the oldest one I noticed was dated 1985. That was a really durable, well-made sign, with the text and images etched into metal. No flimsy plastic signs here.

The rest of the section is pretty standard Sörmland pine forest with blueberry undergrowth. There were several lakes here and there offering resting places with nice views.

Much of it was quiet, as pine forest tends to be, except for the soughing of the wind, although I heard blue tits and finches in a few places.

Section 12 is 8.5 km according to the official notes. Adding another kilometre to walk from the parking spot I found to the beginning of section 12, and then doubling it all, brought the total to 20 km. A good distance for one day, especially when the walking is as hilly and rocky as this was.

Easter break. No difference for me or Eric but Ingrid is at home, and she treated herself to a pancake and anime breakfast in the sofa.

Learning from my earlier failures to get out, today when the weather was sunny in the middle of the day I put all work aside and went out cycling. I cycled to Maltesholm/Råcksta where I hoped I might get some sun and see some spring flowers. There can never be too many photos of spring flowers.

Fast cycling and macro photography don’t combine very well. I had to take a walk before I could get my pulse and adrenaline levels down far enough to get into a calm, harmonious state of mind that let me enjoy the photography.

Just as I was heading back towards my bike, I spotted this year’s first butterfly. There is an Estonian tradition that says that the colour of the first butterfly you see will tell you what your summer will be like. Yellow for a golden, bountiful summer; colourful for a colourful one of course; and white for either a dull or a sorrowful one.

This is obviously a Swedish butterfly and isn’t familiar with the Estonian tradition. But it’s known as the mourning cloak in English and has similar names in both Estonian and Swedish.