Life is good when you’re a cat. And when people kindly provide cat beds in all sorts of places.

In the middle of summer, I am knitting the thickest, warmest, woolliest sweater I’ve ever made. With every sweater or cardigan I make, I realize another gap in my winter wardrobe; this is filling the one for something simple and rustic to wear at home on the coldest days. Not that it won’t be stylish enough to wear to the office! But it will be bulky enough to be somewhat difficult to fit under a coat.

I’m not fond of ribbed hems, and I’ve also learned that rolled hems are not my thing, so here I tried a folded picot hem. Quite nice.

I ran out of the dark gray yarn just after the fold, so there’s a hidden, secret red stripe on the reverse side.

It looks like the sleeve will turn out too narrow. I think I underestimated how much the bulk of the fabric itself would affect fit. My gauge swatch grew a little bit in blocking, so the sleeve *might* be OK after blocking, but I’m sceptical. Nevertheless I blocked just the half-finished sleeve, to check, and now the living room smells like wet sheep.

We were gone in Italy during the Midsummer weekend, so we made up for it with a belated fake Midsummer brunch today.

All the traditions were present. Devilled eggs, pickled herring of various kinds, new potatoes, mini quiches, and a strawberry cake.

The cake may look ugly and sloppy and shapeless, but it is utterly delicious. Strawberries and an elderflower curd – sweet and tart and juicy. Recipe here; Dagens Nyheter is the source.

Ordered four new cushions for our deck furniture. Three looked normal – and the fourth was missing the dots. Which probably won’t affect functionality for a long time, but it looks weird enough that I’ll be sending it back, which is a hassle.

The camera is going on a trip to Portugal for repairs. Actually the main problem is not so much the camera (although it does need repairs) but my everyday zoom lens.

The camera’s problems is that the rear LCD screen only works if I fold it out partway. It’s been that way for long enough that it’s ingrained in my muscle memory now to fold out the screen before even turning on the camera. Not a big problem, most of the time.

Now you see it…

… now you don’t.

The lens on the other hand just plain doesn’t work. When I turn on the camera, the lens motors in and out a few times and then stops, but the picture is black. It looks like it’s not connecting to the camera.

If I’m sending in one for repairs then I might as well send both.

Olympus have made it very easy. Fill in an online form, pay the flat fee, send it off. No guessing, no estimates, no “send it in and we’ll get back to you with a price”. And if they can’t fix it, you get the money back. It’s not cheap, but neither is a new camera.

There hasn’t been much rain recently so the little plum trees need watering. The clay soil gets so compact that it won’t absorb water well at all. I’ve settled on giving each tree one watering can’s worth of water, but I have to portion it out slowly, or it will just run off without reaching the tree. So I water one tree until the water puddles around the tree, then walk around the house to do the same to the other tree on the other side, and back and forth like that until they’re both properly soaked.

Some kind of force had torn down the anti-gnaw protection around the tree, so now I tied them in place with string.

29 °C outside, 29 °C inside. I am not enjoying this.

Ten o’clock at night, and it’s still light enough that I could read outside if I wanted to.

Back to everyday life, and work. Two weeks to go before I take a longer vacation. The week in Italy was by necessity as early as possible in the summer, and the timing of our Estonia trip was also determined by external factors, and the gap between them too long for me to take the whole time off.

There’s a bit of a heat wave going on; the weather here is as hot as what we had in Italy. We went out for lunch to the (temporary?) food-court-slash-park on the quay in Marievik.

Got woken up at 7:30 this morning by some kind of repetitive yowling. I’m guessing it was the house cat who was feeling amorous.

In the morning, a drive from Riva del Garda to Milan through torrents of rain. Literally rivers of rain pouring out from parking lots, through gaps in garden walls, etc.

Ran across the remains of a traffic incident, and people chasing a deer kid in the road, which was probably related.

The Milan airport is Armani-branded.