I’m starting to look forward to my spring ski tour at the end of March, and thinking about the kit I’ve missed during my previous hikes and trips. A sewing kit was one of them.

Hence today’s mini craft project: a travel sewing kit/mini needle book from mixed scraps of fabric.

The needle book obviously holds a few needles in different sizes. The orange pockets behind the felt flaps have pieces cardboard with sewing thread in a few colours and thicknesses. I’ll be adding safety pins as soon as I’ve bought some; it turns out that we have very few left. Somehow safety pins seem to be a consumable even though I can’t remember ever throwing one away.

I also hope to find small, light-weight, blunt-ended scissors somewhere. Embroidery scissors are small but have sharp tips, so I’m afraid they would poke holes in this thing.

I replaced my dead office plant and bought an extra one while I was at it. My little corner is looking cheerier again.

Today was another unbelievably warm and bright Sunday, so I went for a walk again. On my own this time. I took the train to Jakobsberg, walked to Säby gård, and then made a big and crooked circle around most of Järvafältet. That’s another good thing about clear skies: I can use the sun for navigation. I could simply head roughly north for a good while without having to look at any maps.

Järvafältet is large enough to be quite varied. There are few small lakes: two are shallow and reedy and almost more mud flat than lake; a third one is more rocky. There is plenty of the usual spruce and pine forest with granite outcroppings, plenty of moss and blueberry bushes. There are some deciduous forests. There are small heritage farms, and riding schools. There are wide, even paths that are good enough for city strollers, narrower riding trails, bumpy trails mostly used by mountain bikes, and everything in between.

I walked for four hours and got some of all of that. The narrow, hilly, rocky paths are empty and quiet. The wide, even paths are naturally more crowded, but where they’re not, they make for peaceful, meditative walking.

Most of my opportunities to take photos of Ingrid come when she’s cooking. Partly because she does a lot of cooking here nowadays. And partly because that’s one of the things she can’t do in her own room.

Parent-teacher meeting for Adrian at school. As usual, the meeting starts with Adrian showing us some of his work: pictures he’s drawn, stories he’s written.

He’s doing great in all the core subjects – reading, writing, math. In math he’s practicing his times tables for six to eight (feeling confident already with all the others) and paying extra attention to reading the problems carefully so he answers the right question. In English he asked for more challenging materials; he gets so much practice at home from YouTube and Netflix that the basic fare (colours, fruits, etc) is boring him.

Adrian has brought home a head full of lice from school. Truly, when I started combing, they were everywhere. Big, fat, well-fed. I actually caught one in the act of sucking blood. Now I’ve combed and killed them and then treated him with Linicin so hopefully we’re free from them now.

We have a whole apple buffet at home.
I like Ingrid Marie. I actually like them best when they’re just a little bit wrinkly, but still juicy rather than mealy.
Ingrid likes firm, crisp apples and abhors soft, mealy ones. ICA has had several new varieties of extra firm Swedish apples this year, such as Saga and Rubinstar.
Adrian likes Pink Lady apples and isn’t particularly interested in any others.
Eric is not a big fan of apples at all.

Monday’s are still Adrian’s days to cook dinner with me. Today we’re doing his favourite pasta with mature, hard goat’s cheese and pureed peas.

There are two tasks that he particularly enjoys. One is peeling garlic. He likes doing it with just his fingers, with no knife or anything.

The other is weighing. When he measures pasta for the four of us, it has to be 360 grams, no more, no less. He’s always a little bit peeved when the pasta weighs 359 grams and adding one piece takes the weight to 361.

I’m all done with my embroidered circles!

Eighteen circles in total, counting circle-within-circle as one when the inner and outer circle form part of the same design, and as two when they are separate designs.

When I look at the whole design, it makes me think of a map of constellations, or the symbols on a Sami drum.

There is the Web, and the Coiled Chain, and the Fence. And the Big Wheel, the Little Wheel and the Dark Wheel. The Sun Flower, and the Little Flower. The Crow’s Tracks, and the Little Black Thing.

It’s all simple stitches: running stitch, backstitch, chain stitch, and blanket stitch, with some satin stitch and some freeform no-name stitching. This last one is called feather stitch in English, but when I learned it in Estonian we called it “crow’s feet stitch” (varesejalapiste) and that’s how I think of it.

The witch hazel is flowering in beautiful pinkish-orange-red in front of the house. Apparently I bought a red variety. I love it, and I hope it thrives.

And yellow Eranthis is already dotting the gardens in the neighbourhood. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it in January before.