Our baby cousin’s second birthday, and he got a magnetic construction toy that entertained guests of all ages.

Adrian was most proud of this pentagonal prism with inverted pyramid bottoms.

I happened to read a horror story on a knitting forum from someone who had knitted a whole sweater and then discovered that the yarn relaxed a lot when it got wet, so their sweater grew over 10 centimetres in size in both length and width. They were desperately looking for ways to rescue it, with ideas ranging from just ripping it all up, to forcing it to shrink by tumble-drying it, to cutting off 10 cm from the sleeves and knitting new cuffs.

Theirs was knit in a superwash merino yarn, and I am also using a superwash merino yarn for the sweater I’m knitting, and one that’s unfamiliar to me so I’m not entirely sure how it will behave when washed. I think my knitting is tight enough that it can’t possibly grow by as much as theirs did, but I don’t want to end up with an unwearable garment. So I wet blocked the yoke that I’ve knit thus far, just to be on the safe side.

It grew in width from 31.5 cm to 33, which is a rounding error in my eyes, so all is good. Phew.

First there were stamps that you had to moisten (= lick) to put on an envelope.

Then came the self-adhesive ones.

Then came prepaid postage for parcels to print at home.

Now I can buy prepaid postage and just write it on the top right corner of the parcel. Three rows, four characters each, to be written in capital letters in dark ink.

I’m selling a thing online through Tradera, and they offered this as a standard service. This was the first time I ran across this method of paying for postage. A pretty obvious invention, after the fact, but I still find it really clever.

Experimenting with Bayeux stitch, named after the Bayeux tapestry which makes heavy use of it. We were only four people at the embroidery club today, which is about half the ordinary strength, so it was quieter than usual but still very nice. It’s always very interesting to look at the others’ interpretations of the same stitch, with their different fabric and yarn choices, different colours, stitch length, general technique etc.

Nysse lost his little sock, and then another one, and then aggressively licked his toe wound to the point that he undid all the healing of the last few days. So now Eric sewed a little leather booty for him, which we can tie on more securely than the socks.

He yowls at it, and tries to shake it off, and attacks the closest cardboard box to let his frustration out, but then accepts it. Still, it’s got to be better than wearing a plastic cone, I think.

For a while at least he’ll have to stay indoors as well, until we see how reliable the boot solution is. He would much rather be watching the birds out there rather than in here.

I try to keep some kind of easy knitting or crochet project at hand, even on office days. I don’t pick them up every day, but when I don’t bring one, I often end up regretting it. Yesterday I ended up waiting for a slow build pipeline way too many times with nothing to occupy myself with, because my easy crocheting project got complications, and it was frustrating. Luckily I usually have multiple projects ongoing at the same time, so today I grabbed the bag with my large fluffy shawl instead, even though it’s a bit too bulky for a travel project. And was very glad I’d done it, because on my way home the commuter train got stuck for 15 minutes just before Sundbyberg (the station before Spånga) and I was glad to have something at hand.

I am pretty sure that little ball of yarn is not enough to finish this pattern repeat. Sigh. I was so pleased that I was finally going to finish this lace and hang it up. Now it’s gone back from the “easy work” pile to “it’s complicated”.

Nysse has a small abrasion wound on one of his toes, and keeps licking it with his sandpaper tongue so it gets no chance to heal. So now he has a little sock on that paw. Which he is not at all happy about.

Most of the leaves are down. Eric raked them from the ground, while I cleaned them from the gutters. I think we may kind of have forgotten to do it last year, or maybe even a few years, because there was a lot of gunk in them. But now they’re clean!

The old bird feeder had gotten enough bangs and dents (from falling down due to cat attacks) that it was in pretty bad shape, so we have a new one this year. It looks rather similar, because we were happy with the old one and wanted to just buy a fresh copy, but the differences became apparent quite soon.

The previous feeder was round and had three sections with three seats each, so it could be hung with six of them more or less facing the house. The new one is square and has two seats on each side, it kind of feels like fewer birds can be there at the same time.

But the construction itself is much better. The old one had a solid core, and walls between the sections, which made cleaning the inside very awkward. I was poking in there with sticks, and cooking spoons, and table knives. This one is just empty (or full of birdseed) all the way through. I can put my entire hand in there and scrape away seed gunk. Much easier to keep it clean.