All packed for a four-day hike for the long weekend. Rucksack, clothes for tomorrow, water, breakfast rolls, camera, sunglasses.

I don’t enjoy packing or preparing for a trip. It feels like such a chore. Sometimes I end up not going out because the actual getting started takes so much energy. But now I have arranged for my brother to come cat-sit, so I’m officially committed and have to make it happen.

I was originally going to go for Kinnekulleleden, but couldn’t find a train. I don’t know if they’ve really sold out all tickets for tomorrow, or if there’s something else going on, but there was nothing. Instead it’ll be Sörmlandsleden. I’ve now come all the way to Hälleforsnäs, which is reachable by train, and three or four days of hiking from there will take me to Katrineholm, which also has a train station, so for once I can go forward only instead of doing a there-and-back.

Much of my morning commute from Spånga to Liljeholmen is lovely. I cycle via Brommaplan, Alvik, Stora Essingen and Gröndal, and there’s nice bike lanes almost all the way.

The best views are from the bridge from Äppelviken to Stora Essingen.

It’s peak shedding season. This is what my black trousers look like, after Nysse has been lying on them for a short while. No wonder he’s rolling around in the dirt – this must make him feel itchy all over.

He literally rolls around in the dirt, on the sun-warmed, bare ground. And then comes in and asks for cuddles.

Cherry trees flowering in Spånga, last week. I took the photos and then for some reason posted something else that day. But I can’t just not post cherry blossoms.

It’s ant season. Every spring, for about a week or ten days, tiny ants invade the house. I’ve read that they do this in the beginning of their season, when they’re awake but not yet finding enough food out in nature.

For that brief period, there’s no way to completely keep them away, no matter how much of an effort I make. I keep the counters clinically clean. I wipe up the smallest spills. I scrub the floor around the packaging recycling. I leave no tuna out for Nysse. I empty the kitchen compost bin twice a day and run the dishwasher daily. And still they find some minute trace of something somewhere.

Years ago we used to try and fight them with poisons and whatnot. Now that I know how temporary it is, I don’t feel the need to be quite as aggressive about it. Which doesn’t mean that I don’t kill them – I do, but I just squish the ones who are in the house, and wash away the pheromone trail they’ve created while I’ve looked the other way. (They can get a lot done overnight.) But I don’t feel any need to poison the rest of them.

Today some of them have decided that they really want to get into the top kitchen cabinet above the dishwasher. There is nothing there for them! There’s no food in that cabinet, just dishes and kitchen tools. There hasn’t ever been any food there. And still they congregate there.

When I’ve noticed trails of ants, the camera has been the last thing on my mind, which I now regret. I think the invasion is winding down. There may be ten ants on the wall, which feels like a lot when it’s in my kitchen, but there’s enough distance between the individual ants that I can only fit one at a time in a photo.

Continuing with my tetraptych of organza over hand-printed green fabric. Trying out different ways of layering the organza. The first one was a flat layer of organza over printed silk; on the second I tried folding the organza; on the third one I bunched it up and stitched it down more randomly. Photos really don’t do that one justice.

I think the silk needs to make a come-back in the fourth one, to bring it all together, and the purple could be more present in #2 and #3, for the same reason. And they all need a bit more in general (possibly with the exception of the first one).

Many sweater knitting patterns suggest an even rate of decreases from just below the armhole to just above the wrist. On close-fitting garments, that often makes the sleeves too tight for me around the biceps. Instead I tend to knit straight until just above the elbow and only then start decreasing.

That bit worked well this time, as expected, but I wasn’t happy with the decrease rate afterwards. Too steep. Rip it up and do it again.

With a slightly thicker yarn and a slightly looser knit than I generally tend to choose, the cardigan almost knits itself. And when I change my mind, unravelling and re-doing a section is a piece of cake. With loose-ish stitches, there’s room for me to insert a thin cable needle in a row further down in advance, before I even start ripping it up. No need to painstakingly find and pick up the stitches afterwards. Re-knitting it takes an hour at most.

The many-hours hand-crafted pasha mould liner did its job well. Didn’t wrinkle or sag, drained well, and made the relief pattern stand out nicely.

The household needed buttery poppy seed rolls. After the bun fiasco I didn’t have high expectations but they came out absolutely perfect – fluffy and delicious. So there’s nothing wrong with my general ability to bake bread and buns.