The last two embroidery exercises for the “black, white and a colour” course.

First: “Make a design with five squares/rectangles (four-cornered shapes), four circles, and three triangles.” I struggled but in the end made something that I rather liked. The deadline for that exercise was during a very busy week for me, so I fell back on appliqué as a quick way to make shapes.

Apparently it wasn’t just me – appliqué seems to have been the instinctive choice for this exercise for all of us in the group. Hence the follow-up exercise for all of us: realize the same design but without using appliqué at all, only stitches.

This weekend wasn’t less busy. I sat with this embroidery during the Thursday embroidery club session, which I’ve normally set aside for the Stockholm embroidery, and I still ended up working until almost midnight yesterday.

I couched the black quadrilaterals with super-thick wool yarn. I wanted them to be proper black, and I also felt like doing something slightly crazy, and once the idea had struck me, I also just wanted to see what the outcome would look and feel like. I guess “interesting” is a word for it. I’m not in love with them, but I also don’t hate them, and they are definitely attention-grabbing.

We went shopping for Halloween pumpkins. In the past I’ve just bought whatever was available in the supermarkets closest to us, but this year Ingrid drove us to Coop Bromma Blocks to practise driving. They had an entire giant pumpkin section. The section was giant, and so were the pumpkins they had there.

Leaving the house to give space to Ingrid and her friends for her birthday party, I went to the semi-annual crafts fair. Not intending to buy much, but I absolutely needed to visit Apmezga’s stand. For the last sweater I made with their yarn, I used three skeins of yarn and didn’t even wind the fourth one. I recklessly only brought three skeins for the current one. I’m almost at the end of the third skein and the sweater definitely isn’t finished. Unless I want a crop top. Which I don’t.

Apart from that, I bought a bag of wool felt scraps and some other assorted fabric off cuts. I don’t know what I’ll do with them, but they were pretty and cheap so why not.

And of course I always photograph interesting knitwear, for inspiration for future projects. Right know I’m thinking of knitting a sweater or cardigan with a round yoke. I’ve done seamed set-in sleeves, contiguous shoulders of two kinds, raglan sleeves both top-down and bottom-up, but not a round yoke, so I’m curious to try it out.

Ready for Ingrid’s eighteenth birthday festive brunch. Ingrid did all the creative work yesterday – baking and decorating the cake, making the panna cotta, preparing the filling for the devilled eggs. All that was left for this morning was plating and such, plus some slicing of veggie sticks and cheeses.

Devilled eggs is one of her favourite party foods, and now she wants to introduce her friends to the concept. Several of them are generally sceptical about new foods, but the bacon on top of these should convince them.

Fresh fruit, to go with yoghurt and granola, for those who want a lighter meal.

Crostini with burrata, a lemon and olive oil drizzle, and raspberries.

Panna cotta with raspberry jam and a mint sprig.

And now everything is ready for the guests, and it’s time for the parents to make themselves scarce. Ingrid herself was perfectly fine with having us here for the duration, but we all agreed that her friends wouldn’t feel as comfortable with us in the house.

We had Ingrid’s actual eighteenth birthday, and the party for the extended family. Now it’s time for her party with her friends. This one will be a festive brunch, tomorrow.

This is not the first fancy meal that Ingrid invites her friends to, but it will be on a different level. She has been collecting ideas, and then tableware and decorations, for months. The theme for the decorations is sort of romantic in pink and light green, with flower-patterned vintage plates and champagne flutes and candlesticks and slender, elegant vases.

Yesterday, after she finalized the menu, we went shopping for groceries and flowers. Then we cleared most other furniture out of the living/dining room, so that Ingrid could decorate the room and set the table. Ingrid has no school on Fridays this year, so she planned for a full day of baking and food prep today.

I hope her friends have the sense to appreciate the effort that’s going into this!

The last assignment for the “black, white and a colour” embroidery course. Deadline this weekend. I had an idea, and I tried it out, and it didn’t work out at all, so I ripped up an hour and a half of embroidery. That just means I get to do more embroidery, right? But with a bit more time pressure.

Adrian had put “Sourcream & onion stars” on the grocery list. When I came to the snacks section at Coop Bromma Blocks, this particular snack had an entire wall to itself. All the other ones had one or two columns at most. I guess there’s some marketing campaign going on on TikTok or something? I felt a bit reluctant to buy these, because it feels like I let the marketing firm “win”.

Three days ago, the trees were at the peak of their autumn glory. After a windy weekend, today it’s all gone.

Ingrid’s workload at school is very intense. There is a never-ending stream of test after test after test, often two or three per week. She spends several hours studying every night – and the moment she can put one test behind her, it’s time to start cramming for the next one. It’s much more stressful than adult working life – I can spend most of my days producing actual work, instead of constantly focusing on proving my value.

Even subjects like psychology and philosophy have been turned into cramming subjects. Back in my day, I took philosophy as an elective course in high school, and I remember spending most of our time in debates and discussions. Things like the trolley problem, or “a hospital is on fire and none of the patients can get out on their own, whom do you rescue first?” and so on. Whereas Ingrid, instead of discussing existentialism, gets to cram and regurgitate facts about it. How to kill all students’ interest in a fundamentally fascinating subject in three easy steps. It’s like anti-philosophy, actually.

Visited an embroidery exhibition at Husby Gård community centre.

It’s so close to Spånga and so close to my interests but I had no idea it was there, until one of the other members of my Thursday embroidery club told me about it. Today was the last day of the exhibition, so the artist herself, Lena Larsson, was there.

I liked her bold use of colour, and the way she layered fabrics for depth. And the shapes, simple but not strict. Also all the hand-printed fabrics.

All her works (except one) at this exhibition were the same size, so it gave a very coherent impression. Most were grouped by colour theme – the red works, the green ones – and I wondered if she had planned them that way, but she said she’d made them without any such plan and grouped them afterwards.

There was one set of works that clearly had been made to belong together. I like the idea of realizing the same idea in multiple different, but coherent ways. I should do that myself.