I spent today at the Women in Tech conference since I got a free ticket.

I liked some parts of it, but on the whole I found it a bit too fluffy and not techy enough. Some talks were inspirational – women entrepreneurs talking about their companies and how they use technology to make the world better. (Some of these almost veered into advertising.) Some were sorta-kinda informational but too vague to actually be useful – there was a session about something something AI and humans, and two days later I can’t remember a single point of what was said there. There were several panel debates, mostly too short to reach any kind of interesting results.

I can think of one potential audience that would benefit from this event: female technology students on their way out into the working world, who need inspiring examples to follow.

Women In Tech is not the only network aiming to encourage more women to study technology and work in the IT industry. Various such networks and organizations occasionally invite me to join. But I never do.

Fundamentally it’s because I don’t identify as a “female developer” or a “woman in tech”. It is not how I think of myself. I am a developer, among other developers. I very, very rarely notice the fact that I am one of only three female developers in our fifty-person Stockholm office, and all the others are men.

I’ve never felt or been told that I as a woman “should not” be interested in STEM subjects, “should not” work in technology. Never felt that I am less welcome, less listened to, less respected than men in the same business.

But I guess I’ve been lucky. Both my parents are scientists and it’s always been almost self-evident that I would follow in that direction. (I wonder how they would have reacted if I had chosen to study something fluffy and less employable like, say, sociology, or art history. Or not gone down the academic path at all and become a hairdresser.) I’ve always been encouraged at school, and I’ve always worked at incredibly meritocratic firms.

I’m preparing for a new knitting project, by knitting gauge swatches.

I will have a green cardigan!

I’ve found a new pattern that seems a bit more complicated than the previous one I tried making but maybe, hopefully, is also more forgiving. The bottom half is in cabled ribbing which should be nicely stretchy so the I don’t need to get the sizing 100% perfect. And the top half is simple stockinette stitch with no lacy complications, so the gauge swatch should be a good predictor of sizing for that part. The fit and sizing of the sleeves will probably be the trickiest part.

No, I’m not mending books. These are books about mending.

I have three. Two go together, and the third one stands on its own. All three are in Swedish.

The two are called simply Lappa and Stoppa – “Patch” and “Darn”. They’re published by Hemslöjdens Förlag, a small publishing house (owned by a non-profit) that specializes in books about crafts. These two are part of their “technique booklets” series – slim, focused, practically oriented booklets about a specific technique, such as darning. Their other books are also practical in nature, rather than shiny heavy coffee table books.

I like their books in general. I think I own about a fifth of their catalogue… But these two books are my favourites. They combine practicality with just the right amount of fun without turning too silly. Their examples are varied in style. And their way of mending things is wonderfully lighthearted and irreverent. Have a hole in your sweater? Make it larger! Or make more of them!

The booklets are heavy on pictures, both inspirational and instructional. Texts are mostly brief, often step-by-step.

The standalone book by Kerstin Neumüller is also named simply Lappat & lagat, “Patched and mended”. It’s an actual book, thicker and more solid than the two booklets, and covers a broader range of mending topics than just patching and darning: how to repair a buttonhole, how to repair leather goods, etc. It’s more solid and serious in tone as well. More instruction and less inspiration; more text and fewer step-by-step lists. It’s a useful book and I’ve learned things from it, and if I didn’t have the others I’d probably be quite happy with it – but it’s simply not quite as much fun to pick up than the other two.

I made a roasted sweetcorn and saffron soup for dinner. I thought it could do with some wine. Went to the pantry and got some wine. There was a bottle of home made apple wine and a bottle or two of store-bought grape wine. The apple would go well with sweetcorn, I decided.

Before I added the wine to the soup, I took a sip. It was so good that using it in a soup would be a waste. Instead I poured it from my measuring cup into the first glass I found. And used the store-bought wine for the soup instead.

I slept really, really badly today and have been tired and listless all day. Had no energy for anything other than reading.

Sometimes my sleep goes wrong. I hover on the edge of sleep and dream weird dreams all night and don’t get any deep, restful sleep at all. They’re not exactly nightmares, not quite – no dreams of falling or being chased – but the dreams are all about something being wrong. I’m going to gym class but I’m wearing heavy boots. I’m in a stairwell and I need to go up but the stairs are not there. I’m in a home (that’s not my real home but it is my home in the dream) but the furniture has been rearranged. I’m in my last year of university but I realize I haven’t taken any of the required courses. And so on. I wake up in the morning and I feel like I’ve barely slept.

Adrian, starving for contact, sat next to me in the sofa and browsed my blog, especially all posts in the “Adrian” category, and showed his favourites to me. From the first photos of him as a baby, to the last few days’ posts about Åre.

Last day. We’re taking a train to Stockholm in the afternoon, but squeezed in a few hours of skiing in the morning. As usual, the slopes are very empty on switchover days (weekends) which makes for extra pleasant skiing. Just look at these empty slopes! There’s barely anyone there!

As usual, I’m a much better skier when I have the slope all for myself. I don’t have to think about where other people are and where they might be going. I can get into a flow and just turn. Swish, swish, swish.

I liked Åre. But then again I’ve liked all the other ski resorts we’ve been to as well.

Åre is larger than most ski resorts in Sweden, with more pistes to choose from. For everyone except Ingrid, that wide choice doesn’t matter much – we won’t use the red or black runs anyway. Mostly what we want is a variety of blue slopes. Our excursions to the plateau and the peak were fun, though.

I was afraid that it might feel too large, and since it’s very well-known, that it would be crowded. But it was no more crowded than any of the other places we’ve been to. It did feel a little bit more commercial and less familiar than e.g. Kläppen, where all the lift attendants always said hi and high-fived the kids.

One thing that really impressed me in Åre was food. The quality of food was really good in all the restaurants where we ate, and the range of vegetarian options much wider than what I’ve seen in other ski resorts. I remember hopelessly alternating between pizza and the same boring halloumi burger every single day for a week in Idre, and the one and only dinner option there was a cheap, greasy pizza and kebab joint. Here, too, most restaurants had a vegetarian burger on the menu – but all had some other vegetarian choices as well, and even the burgers varied. I can survive on dull food of course, but I’m much happier if I get tasty, varied food.

Another beautiful but cold day, and we made another outing to the top.

Skiing from here to there involves one really steep red run. It’s so steep and icy that when I reached it last time I was uncertain whether I would be able to ski it at all. I was very sure that Adrian wouldn’t be able to do it. Instead we took the free ski bus to the cable car station, queued for a while and took the cable car straight to the top. Very convenient.

At the top (which is not technically the top of the mountain but I’m going to call it the top anyway) everything is encrusted with snow. The cable car station doorway, all the buildings, the signposts, the cables. It looks almost surreal.

From the top it’s mostly nice, gentle, long ski routes down. Pure pleasure and sightseeing!

A day or two before our trip, I checked the weather report for Åre and packed accordingly. The weather forecast was way off target, both fortunately and unfortunately. The forecast promised temperatures just around freezing, and clouds all the time. Instead we have temperatures well below &ndash,10°C, and much more blue skies and sunshine than I had hoped.

Yesterday the cold didn’t bother me. Today by midmorning I was so cold I had to go back inside and double up on all my layers. Double polar fleeces, double leggings, double wool socks. Double layers on my hands I already had – I wear merino wool liner gloves inside my mittens so that I can take off the mittens (for taking photos, for example) and not immediately feel like my fingers will fall off in the cold.

In the afternoon we stopped at a piste-side café for a hot drink. Does the water in the vases look cloudy? That’s because it’s frozen. The tulip stems are encased in lumps of ice. But we’re out of the wind, and the hot drink is hot, so that’s all right.

Adrian meanwhile wasn’t bothered by the cold at all. He’s like a walking nuclear reactor.

He’s still bravely practicing the snowboard. I was a bit skeptical and thought that he would probably give up after a few days. But he keeps at it, not just during the lessons, and he’s learning fast. He is already connecting his turns and getting some flow going.

A cold morning (–14°C); slightly less cold during the day.

The Björnen area suits us very well, with its variety of blue runs. Even when we’ve ventured further away during the day, late in the afternoon while Adrian has his snowboard lesson (and Eric goes home for the day) Ingrid and I just go up and down the Järven lift and its blue runs. They’re very pleasant: wide, curved, wooded, not so steep that they get icy. And with beautiful views!

The Järven lift is close to a lot of housing, so its queue fills up in the afternoon with people heading “home”. But because they are heading home, the runs down from this lift can be nearly empty. I’ve skied down here several times without seeing a single other person.

Most lifts here open a “singles queue” to one side when the main queue grows long, to make sure that any free seats get filled and the lift runs at maximum capacity. These queues always move much faster than the main ones. Especially with the larger chairlifts we’ve now learned to always head straight for the singles queue, even when it looks longer than the main queue.

After two gray days it was bright and sunny today and very little wind, so I wanted to head up to the higher slopes. See some views, maybe take some photos.

Getting from Björnen (at the far right end of the piste map) to the pistes near the peak of Åreskutan (at the far left of the piste map) and then back again took me and Ingrid effectively all day. We were not the only skiers heading in that direction and the lift queues ate up a lot of time.

We did get some wonderful views up there. And the slopes were quite to my taste. The map marks them as ski routes rather than pistes – they’re relatively long, narrow and gentle. They’re great for just gliding along and taking in the views.

The slopes were not crowded but the restaurants on that side of the resort were all completely packed. At one place the waiting time for a table was over an hour. So I didn’t enjoy all the fabulous views as much as I might have because towards the end I was just so hungry.

Meanwhile Adrian and Eric stayed in Björnen all day. Adrian has decided to learn snowboarding and is taking lessons, but it means he’s effectively a total beginner on the slopes again and can only manage the gentlest inclines at the slowest pace.

I’d like to see those views from the plateau again, and show them to Eric and Adrian as well. I’m thinking of going back up there another day, maybe on a day with less beautiful weather and therefore fewer people. And with an earlier start and a more efficient plan.