This shawl is coming out very nice, and I’m rather ready to be done with it. It’s a triangular construction that starts at one corner and ends at the opposite edge. Initially it feels like it knits up so fast, but then the rows get longer and longer, and it really feels like the progress stalls towards the end.

I’m so used to being able to combine knitting with another activity – maybe watch a knitting podcast on Youtube – but with this yarn it’s not so easy, I need to actually look at what I’m doing. At the same time the pattern doesn’t require much concentration. It’s rather perfect for knitting club, actually, where I can look at the knitting but still talk and listen to other people at the same time.

I am aware of my ageing these days. Physically I’m past my peak, and now I need to make an effort to stave off decline.

I do work out, but I also make conscious choices to fit in some exercise in my everyday life. Strength, mobility, balance, conditioning. I want to put off the old lady stage – “oh, I can’t do that, what if I fall” – for as long as possible.

Always take the stairs. Always walk, no electric scooters for me.

Also: put on and take off my shoes while standing on one leg. Great balance training.

The cold season, the season of thick sweaters, is over, and now they all need to be washed and put away for the summer. It’s going to take me a while.

It’s not the washing that takes time but the drying. My thickest knits take at least two days to dry fully.

There’s room for two sweaters on the dining table. I guess I could spread another one out elsewhere, but the next limiting factor is bath towels. A sweater straight out of water is going to be dripping, no matter how hard you squeeze the water out of it. The way to get most of the water out is to spread the sweater on a thick bath towel, roll them both up, then add more pressure by standing and treading on it. Afterwards the sweater will be much dryer and the bath towel will be soaked. So I’ve got two sweaters drying on the dining table, and two bath towels drying in the laundry room, so that they can be ready for the next two sweaters.

Last season I did a lot of digging around the elder bush, under which there was an anemone patch. At that time of year, the anemones were not easy to detect, and I was worried that I had maybe dug them all up. Relieved to see that I managed to spare most of them. Maybe the patch is a bit smaller than it used to be, but hopefully they can spread again.

I knew that I had to clean the house today. It’s never going to happen on a weekday, and I’m away next weekend, and there’s no way it can wait another two weeks – there are dust bunnies gathering in the corners.

And still I put it off all day. I didn’t even do anything particularly pleasurable – just kind of wasted the whole day away, quite aware all of the time what I was doing. Procrastinating in the most unrewarding way possible. I ended up cleaning at night, in lamplight. Which didn’t make the process more enjoyable at all.

For what? Why? I don’t get it. It’s not like someone else was telling me that I ought to clean. It was my decision to clean, and for my own benefit. Still somehow my brain found it better to put it off.

Kulturnatt Stockholm – Stockholm Culture Night.

Sensus, the umbrella organization for study circles under whose aegis our embroidery club takes place, participated in the project with a packed programme. Concerts, talks, workshops… including an embroidery exhibition and workshop that we were invited to contribute to. Members from our small club and two others hung our works in the small workshop room where we have our usual Thursday sessions.

One of the other clubs had themed embroideries only, on the theme of “sunrise”. The other had “wandering embroideries” on a couple of themes – a number of people all start work on same-themed, same-sized pieces of same-colour fabric, and then hand them over to the next person in a circular manner, until everyone has worked on every piece.

Our contribution to the exhibit was a mixed bag, which I rather like as a concept. Many embroidery exhibitions are intricate and figurative, which can certainly be impressive and interesting and beautiful, but I wouldn’t want interested newcomers to get the impression that that is the only thing that embroidery can be. I myself don’t much enjoy making those kinds of pieces. We had some figurative works, but also abstract ones, as well as clothes and accessories embellished with embroidery.

We were supposed to hang up our name signs, for a personal touch, and I had forgotten mine at home. We had plenty of materials that we’d collected for the evening’s workshop, so I sat down and made a new one, in the hour that I had between finishing hanging and before the exhibition officially opened.

I didn’t hang around while the exhibition and workshop were actually open. I heard afterwards that there were so many visitors that at times there weren’t enough seats for everyone who wanted to try it out, so I guess it wasn’t a bad thing that I wasn’t there, taking up another seat.

Instead I partook in the event offerings myself. First: K.A. Almgren silk mill, a historical silk weaving factory. The factory has its original jacquard looms from the 1860s – the roots of punch card computer programming. There’s an exhibition about the history of the factory and the people who have worked in it, as well as plenty of examples of fabulous patterned silk fabrics.

The original looms are in full working condition, and at least one person is still employed and working there as a weaver to keep the knowledge alive.

The punch card patterns for some of the more intricate fabrics could be hundreds and hundreds of cards long, each card corresponding to one weft thread.

Afterwards I walked to the shop and exhibition room of Konsthantverkarna, a crafts collective. Their current exhibition is Marie Eklund’s They’re spoon-spoons, silly!, a collection of hand-carved spoons, one crazier than the other.

Titeln anspelar på ett citat av David Bowie ”They’re shoe-shoes, silly”, vilket var hans svar på frågan om det är herrskor, damskor eller bisexuella skor han hade på sig. Marie Eklund får ofta frågan vad det är hon sysslar med egentligen. Är skedarna brukbara? Hållbara? Slöjd? Skräp? Konst? Dyra? Till för vem? För vad? Varför då? They’re spoon-spoons, silly!

The title is a play on a quote by David Bowie: “They’re shoe-shoes, silly”, which was his response when asked whether he was wearing men’s shoes, women’s shoes, or bisexual shoes. Marie Eklund is often asked what she’s doing. Are the spoons usable? Durable? Crafts? Rubbish? Art? Expensive? For whom? For what? They’re spoon-spoons, silly!

The car hit a nice number on the odometer. I’m not quite sure how long a car can last, but I hope to get many more kilometres out of it. Sometimes I think that I should replace it with a smaller, lighter, more fuel-efficient car – but with how little I drive, it would probably take me well over a decade to make back the money that a newer car would cost.

The Viburnum has been flowering throughout most of the winter and now spring as well.

There’s some sort of photography going on at the Active Solution office today. They’re taking photos for use in presentation and marketing materials – general shots of the office, people working at their desks, meetings, workshops etc. Guess who completely forgot the email that was sent out in advance with suggestions about what to wear. “Light colours, nothing too loud,” and I turn up in the loudest possible orange top. I guess I can cover this up with a cardigan – that is black, with colourful curlicues. Umm. Sorry.

Adrian is stepping up, now that it’s mostly just him and me in the house. (And Nysse, of course.) Getting groceries and cooking three or four meals per week.

Most days I enjoy cooking; even on tired weekdays I don’t mind it. But it is really nice to be surprised, to eat something that has been cooked based on someone else’s ideas, based on someone else’s tastes.