Finally got started with that loose pocket I’ve been thinking about for ages.

Designed and cut and measured and started assembling. I got the horizontal seams done today so the structure is all there now. There will be a open pocket space, big enough for a phone, and a small zippered inside pocket for keys. Just the vertical seams left now.

The outer is piece of scrap fabric from the local charity shop. It may have been a small tablecloth in a previous life. The lining is a piece of an old fabric dying experiment that I have inherited.

This is a slow sewing project. Constructed from scratch and hand-stitched. I especially enjoy making tiny little whip stitches to secure a folded edge.

One of my favourite Estonian foods is karask, a barley bread with sour milk.

It wasn’t a staple when I was a child, but my mum made it a few times. Now it’s come back as a commercial product – not in every supermarket, but some do sell it, as well as some artisanal bakeries and food market stalls.

For some reason I’ve never tried making my own, until very recently. I made a first batch a couple of weeks ago, and another one this weekend.

What made this one even better than a standard karask was the addition of quark to the batter. Barley is great, quark is great, the combination is even better.

These days quark is a health food: all low-fat or no-fat, marketed for its high protein content, homogenized into a smooth, creamy mass for easy consumption. Back when I was a child, Estonian quark was a solid, dense, rich product. The richer version was 12% fat, I believe, while the skinny kind was 6%. It was sold in paper-wrapped pats, kind of like you’d buy butter today.

I ran across old-school tvorog at the Baltic store. Sold in one-kilogram blocks, grainy and solid, just like it’s supposed to be. Not Estonian but Latvian, I believe (didn’t look to closely at the packaging) but still – what a find. Half of the one-kilo package immediately went into a double recipe of quark karask. The other half is in the freezer for when I bake another batch.

Served warm, with butter and – by suggestion of the recipe page – honey. I never had honey on my karask before but why not.

Near miss #1: Adrian and I are going to London for a few days during autumn break, which is this week, and I was this close to missing the fact that you now need a permit to enter the UK. I know they’re out of the EU but for years that didn’t actually mean anything for travel, and somehow I’d missed that this had changed.

The confirmation email from airline even mentioned it, but the new permit thing is called an ETA – a most unfortunate naming choice, I have to say. As I skimmed the email, I saw the term in passing, naturally interpreted it as “Estimated Time of Arrival” in the context of a flight booking, and didn’t pay any more attention to it.

Today I finally noticed it for real and had a minor bout of panic because it can apparently take days to get an ETA (“Electronic Travel Authorization”, why couldn’t they just call it a visa) and we don’t have that many days. Spent a good chunk of the afternoon going through an online application process only to realize, when my payment didn’t go through, that I had landed on a scam website and had to start all over on the real site.

The process required photos and face scans and scans of the passport and whatnot. I got the applications in just before Adrian had to leave for his week at Eric’s, and thankfully got an approval back within 10 minutes, so our trip was saved.

Near miss #2: Due to the ETA panic I nearly forgot the fact that I had a concert ticket for this evening, and almost missed a concert with Grigori Sokolov. Missing it wouldn’t have been quite as sad as missing a London trip, but still, I’m glad I remembered it in the last minute. Beethoven and Brahms. Just the thing I needed to get my adrenaline levels back to normal again.

The semiannual crafts festival. I was going to take a half-day at work and come her yesterday to avoid the crowds, but other things turned up, so today it is.

I was also thinking of just skipping it because it’s not like I need more fabric or yarn. But it’s not so much about the buying as it is about inspiration. I come home with one or two purchases, and a dozen photos and notes of things I could try. Sweater design ideas, little things I could sew, or otherwise make, etc.

On the buying side of things, I went in with a plan. I have learned that impulse buying doesn’t work for me. I end up with yarn I don’t know what to do with, or too little yarn for the idea I later come up with, etc. This time I knew I wanted material for a thick, warm, green sweater or cardigan, and this one jersey fabric that I have been looking at for years now because it is so lovely. I don’t know what or when I will use it, but the thought of the seller maybe discontinuing this fabric without me having a piece of it was not making me happy at all, so now I have a piece of it.

Fixed the chest. It turned out that Eric had already done one round of fixing years before: there were strips of wood attached along the long edges to keep the bottom in place. Now there are similar strips on the short edges, so unless and until the bottom actually cracks under pressure, it should stay in place.

Then I had to fit all the fabric into the chest again. Plus a bit more, because I had one or two recently bought pieces that I hadn’t packed away yet. It was stuffed to the brim before. How will it all fit?

I threw out a very few pieces, and moved scraps that were only good for rags into a separate rag bag. (You never know when you need a soft fabric rag for polishing something.) Re-folded much of the rest into flatter, wider shapes, and somehow managed to fit it all in there again.

Linens and solid woven cottons on the left.

Jerseys and printed cottons next to those.

Upholstery fabric and entire garments (shirts and trousers in good fabrics).

Wools, furs, and shiny fabrics.

Bags of small scraps on top of everything.

I own pieces of actual rabbit fur. Whatever will I use them for? No idea, but they don’t deserve to be thrown away, that’s for sure.

My sketch for this project had rough, thick lines for the oval shapes, and I wanted to recreate those in embroidery. Paper string, maybe, or a thin ribbon, couched. That’s where I paused at the last embroidery club meeting.

In the intervening two weeks, I had completely forgotten this plan, and was only reminded of it when I took out and unfolded the fabric. I did not remember it at all when packing my backpack this morning. Grabbed the embroidery project bag and that was that. No paper string.

Not willing to compromise with my vision, and also not interested in making up some random time-filler task for today, I improvised. Went on a material hunt through the community centre. Found a crumpled-up paper bag. Cut off a thin strip, coloured it mostly-black with an ordinary pen, and twisted it into my own black paper string. Not as durable as the store-bought stuff, but it doesn’t need to hold up to anything, so it’s all good.

Brewery tour and beer tasting evening at Omnipollos kyrka with Active Solution.

Kind of fun, mostly because this brewery is fun and irreverent in their approach to everything. It was founded by two people, one “beer person” and one artist. Now the beer person brew experimental crazy beer, and the artist person makes art for each new beer. Apparently the first beer they submitted to Systembolaget caused serious head-scratching because the label they sent over was just art and didn’t even include the name of the beer.

We had dinner (with beer), then a tour of the brewery as well as of the atelier in the attic. Then a long beer-tasting session, which I abandoned halfway through. Most beer is undrinkable to me, and I don’t much enjoy drunken company either.

They had some interesting alcohol-free beer, one with mango flavour and one with blueberry. I did enjoy those with my dinner. Sadly but expectedly, those were not part of the tasting.

All I wanted was to find some fabric scraps for sewing a small loose pocket.

As I lifted out a stack of fabric from my fabric chest, I realised that the bottom was this close to falling out. The chest is about thirty years old and somewhat cheaply made to begin with. The fact that I sometimes press the lid down to compress the contents hasn’t helped its structural integrity. The bottom is a thin sheet of plywood, held in place by grooves in the sides. Pressure has made it bend, and it’s really not staying in those grooves any more.

I have my sewing materials now, but I also have a living room corner heaped with fabric, and a DIY project waiting for me.

Ingrid’s birthday was on an away week. We had an extra mini-celebration today, since she’s here now. With Estonian cake! (From the Baltic shop in Sollentuna.)

Did I remember to take photos of the celebration, the presents, or the eating of cake? No, I did not.

Posting this with a slight delay. Now that Ingrid’s birthday has passed, I can share pictures of a pair of socks I made as a gift for her. These are the softest, fuzziest thing I have ever knit. Merino sock yarn with pink and blue speckles, paired with a chunky white mohair. I want to say that they feel like a cloud, but clouds are notoriously cold and wet. They feel like a cloud should feel?