The lawn needs mowing, but the primroses are still flowering, so it’s a precision exercise to mow around and between the primrose clusters.

Today Ingrid finished the last exam in the last subject of her last school year, which we celebrated with ice cream at Spånga Konditori. She’s been studying so hard that she deserves all the ice cream.

Adrian still has more tests to get through tomorrow, and we’ll be celebrating that with all the fresh raspberries, blueberries and strawberries that we can eat.

Preparing to charm and impress the parents of Ingrid’s long-term boyfriend, whom we have invited over for fika.

All done with the Stockholm embroidery! Needs better lighting to do it proper justice, though.

Staple guns are strangely satisfying to work with.

Working on my green organza tetraptych, hoping to get it to a presentable state in the week that’s left before our embroidery club’s last meet-up of the season. It would feel nice to have it finished. (The Stockholm embroidery will be fully finished and mounted this weekend, as soon as I get my delivery of linen backing fabric.)

I like embroidery projects where I can let the design emerge as I go. I have an overall concept or idea, but no detailed design sketches. I do a bit, let that marinate, do a bit more, look at what I have and consider what more might be needed. An incremental, intuitive approach. Sometimes I don’t even have a real plan for what I’ll do with the yarn I’ve threaded my needle with. I just know that there will be something with this yarn in roughly this area. Only when I have it in my hands and start stitching does the design coalesce.

Sometimes the yarn or the fabric decides the details. When my hank of green thread ends, then that’s where the couching ends. When I want a piece of the silk fabric, if I have an existing scrap piece with roughly the right characteristics, then I take that, instead of imagining some sort of ideal and trying to find it in a larger piece – and the scrap piece can then set the tone for its surroundings.

Nysse is keeping a close eye on the crane delivering 1 m³ of soil for the new planting area.

The Monday after the kids leave for their week elsewhere, I always feel a bit empty. The Sunday evening just after they go, I’m breathing out and relaxing. But on the Monday I miss them a bit extra. It’s like a slight hangover.

When I’m alone in the house, I can feel a temptation to lower my standards. Is it really worth cooking a full meal if it’s just me eating? Setting the table and everything?

Yes. Yes it is. If my family deserves an appetizing meal nicely presented, then so do I. So what if the meal is just porridge? I wouldn’t dump the fruit on the table on a cutting board if I was serving this to Ingrid and Adrian; I can serve it in a nice bowl even if it is just for me.

(Mixed-grain porridge with orange zest, served with honey, sliced orange, chopped almonds and fresh mint.)

As pretty this year as they have been every year.

The lamp stopped working. Blinked off and on once, and then went permanently off. I swapped lightbulbs, extension cords, and wall outlet, so I guess the lamp itself is the problem.

I’m unused to investigating and fixing mechanical and electrical problems. Other traditionally maybe-male tasks like basic carpentry, yard work of all kinds – sure. But for some reason cars, electrical appliances, and just machinery of all kinds feels irrationally scary. I know it’s not going to blow up just because I open it up, and I know I can be careful enough to put it back together the way it was, but still. Somehow I expect to fuck it up before I’ve even started.

I did disassemble and then reassemble an electrical plug recently, to get the cable through a too-small opening. Nothing exploded. I guess the lamp is another super-small, super-safe project to ease me into this.

(It turned out to have a little black box inside, labelled “dimmer” on one side and “fuse” on the other. Probably the thing that broke, then. And look – nothing exploded this time, either.)

A deadline was exactly what was needed. I had all the materials – all I needed was a nudge, and a whole lot of patience.

First: pinning. With lots and lots of pins. Note to self: don’t try to do this wearing a knitted sweater, because those pins catch on everything.

Stretched and pinned to a sheet of foam board, it’s already looking nice:

Lacing it from the reverse side.

You really don’t want any knots in the lacing thread, because they make it near impossible to tighten the lacing, so I ended up working with 5-meter pieces of thread. Trying to keep them from tangling was an exercise in patience.

It reminded me of an old Estonian folk tale, where Clever Hans and Old Nick were both going to sew something. Probably Hans challenging Old Nick, as he often did. Old Nick had thick and clumsy fingers, so he asked Hans to thread a needle for him. Hans threaded his own needle with a normal length of thread. For Old Nick, he first gave a very short piece, and when he complained, gave him a very long piece so he had to run back and forth across the yard for each stitch. I felt like old dumb Nick with my long piece of thread here.

Even with all my stretching and blocking, there’s a tiny bit of puckering in the blue background fabric. It’s only noticeable with the light coming from the side and putting the puckers in relief. When it’s hanging on the wall, I’m sure it won’t even be noticeable. For the photo at the top, I turned it with the long edge towards the window, and that already made a difference.

Now I want to frame it on a green background fabric. That’ll be a project for next weekend, when the fabric has arrived.