I've found out that the school is very close to us and I can walk there in 25 minutes, taking it easy. The walk takes me across the bridge to Liljeholmen and the view from there is very good.

You can see our house from the bridge. I cropped the photo a bit to show the house better, the previous photo of the bridge gives better sense of scale.

The past three days have been an introduction to how the school works, what's where, etc. Tomorrow I'll start with my regular group at SFI and I'm a bit nervous about it. So far it's been fairly easy, but from tomorrow no-one's going to speak English to me and that's scary. I keep repeating to myself: it'll be fine, it'll be fine.

I certainly hope so.

P.S. I couldn't get a good picture of the blanket. Perhaps it won't refuse to be photographed when it's finished.

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Today was the first day at the SFI course. This week is an introductory week and the students will be placed to their groups on Friday. The preliminary placements were given out today and I've gotten my wish: to learn Swedish as fast as possible. The speed of study rating is 1-10 where 1 is a Norwegian or a Dane and 10 is somebody to whom Swedish is completely alien. I got a 3 on that scale. Yay!

The guide/teacher spoke Swedish first and then English. I was surprised that I could understand about 80-90% of the Swedish. My writing skills are non-existent, though. Hopefully I can put some emphasis on developing the writing skills during the course. This course seems to be somewhat focused on the individual student, while still following a set frame.

R is going away to role-play over Easter. At first I thought to visit folks in Tallinn, but I was too late — all the tickets we could afford were already taken. So I'm going to R's moms place instead. It's about time I visited her anyway.

I'll take along yarn for a few projects, like Critter Knitters blankets, Everyday Cardigan and whatever else inspires me at the time.

I've started on the first kitty blanket. I'm using Bravo acrylic yarn that I had bought for socks, but after the first pair disintegrated I put it aside. It is made out of small mitered squares that require no sewing. There are lots of ends, though. No picture tonight, I'll try to take a better picture in daylight tomorrow.

Projects In Planning.

Adrienne Vittadini Everyday Cardigan. I haven't cast on the swatch yet, but have decided that 7mm needles would be better for the Deni yarn than 10mm needles I originally planned to use. Yes. I'm still planning winter things because it's cold here. The temperatures outside may be rising, but in the inside it's too cold to wear just a T-shirt. Brrrrr! Also a pair of mittens using the reasearch I did on the Votic fragment.

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My aunt gave me a digital camera when I was over in Tallinn last weekend, so I took my new toy out for a walk yesterday. We live on an island in Stockholm's City Centre and there are quite a few bridges nearby.

This is what you see when you take the stairs down at the side of the house and walk past three houses to the river.

If you walk by the water uphill then you come to the bridge to Liljeholmen.

If you walk back to the house and past it you come to a small bridge to yet another island. From that bridge you can see a bridge to north and the Old Town beyond it.

I am slowly starting to learn how to navigate in Stockholm. So far I know where the local food stores are, the location of a yarn store, where are the subway station's various entrances and how to get to the airport and ferry terminal.

Thus, having the essentials covered, I can take my time exploring my new home town.

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No knitting to report for the past two days. But...

I finished a research paper about a 13th century Votic knit fragment found in Estonia. I need to have it checked by a native English speaker and sent to be evaluated for publishing in an archaeological magazine. Hopefully I'll get a permission to make it available on the web too.

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There were eight of us who had a package deal that included two-way tickets and hotel rooms for two nights. The fun started on Thursday night on the boat. Although in the beginning we suffered through really horrible singing in the bar. Later we went up to the disco/club/dance floor and had some interesting experiences observing some of the customers. Fun night, we retired around four.

On Friday we got off the boat, some of our party got ripped off by a taxi driver, some actually remembered my warning. Unfortunately there is a tendency by port or airport cab drivers to ask for a lot more money from innocent tourists. Nothing helps if they have a doctored meter, but usually once you got a meter on, the fare will be fair.

We left our bags at a hotel and went to the Old Town to have lunch. Later I took some people fabric shopping, run some errands while they went back to the Old Town and visited mom before meeting everybody at the hotel again at five PM. We took our stuff to the event site, met lots of cool people who were arriving and had oodles of fun catching up. Later I took some of the people to have dinner in one of my favorite restaurants and got back to the site right before the doors closed for the night.

The curfew was/is one of the problems with this site. An SCA party involves consuming various amounts of alcohol. The site, being a school, was dry. Which is OK in itself, but not OK when one can't stay out and party, then go back to the site. This combination will diminish the number of people ever coming back to an Estonian SCA event drastically. And that is a shame because they are fun to be around, even when one doesn't drink. They just accept it and party on. We went to bed around five again.

Saturday morning arrived a bit too early. I got up, left the heavy partiers to sleep and went down to see if I could help out. I was given a task, but then one self-appointed busybody decided she was The One to do it, so I just watched the tourney. I didn't understand any fighting technicalities, but enjoyed the show anyway. Fortunately R is a heavy fighter and he will explain things to me at next event or fighters practice. He was missed at the event, both by me and by his friends. Real life interfered and he could not come.

After the tourney and lunch I hung out with various groups of friends I've made. There are so many cool people in the SCA and you want to hang out with all of them at the same time. That is impossible, but I managed to spend some time with everybody I knew and met some new people too. Fun, fun, fun.

The feast at Olde Hansa was a disappointment. The quality of their food has degraded and paying for an expensive feast where only dessert was actually tasty, is not worth it. I will not be going back there, if I want to eat that cake, I'll go to the restaurant and order it for much less money. After the feast some of us went back to the site, packed up and took the bags to the hotel. Then we went out to a pub and stayed out until the pub closed at four.

I'd set the alarm to go off at 9 AM so I'd be at the school at 10. Luckily my mom called me at ten or we'd slept much longer. The weather had turned ugly — it was raining sideways, except it couldn't really decide if it was really raining or snowing. I tried to call the event steward and cancel the tour. Instead of getting a herald to announce it, she had me go to the site and do it myself. Fine. It turned out that there was one person who was slightly interested, but agreed that you can't see much when it's raining in your eyes. So the tour was canceled.

After saying a few goodbyes I went back to the hotel. There was a couple who was interested in buyng a travel backpack, the rest wanted to go to the Old Town again. I took the couple shopping and we met with the others at the hotel at 5 PM to take our luggage to the ferry port. Once back on the ferry we had a light dinner. I went to bed and slept, my cabin mate returned around 2 AM.

This morning we took it easy getting off the ferry, had a leisurely lunch at Central Station and parted. I got home around 2PM, completely pooped, but happy.

There are a few things I know to avoid if there will be another event at the school site. Other than that I had a blast, the whole weekend would have been perfect if R could have been there. I am planning to organize just a party weekend in Tallinn. No SCA event, no school with a curfew, just a bunch of friends and a good place to party. It promises to be another successful weekend.

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Everything is packed. I decided not to take any fancy clothes with me, just one everyday outfit, winter cloak and hood. The weatherpeople at http://ilm.ee/tallinn/ predict rain for Saturday. Yuck. At least, we can go inside when the rain gets too bad. Hmmm... Pehaps, considering the weather, I should take two dresses. Just in case.

Other than that it promises to be a fantastic event, lots of cool people I haven't seen for a while are going to be there and I get to show them around the Old Town on Sunday. Yay!

No progress on knitting front and there probably won't be any until next week.

I'll post the event report on Monday. Until then, have a fabulous weekend!

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Today I signed up for SFI – Swedish for Immigrants. This program is not only teaching language, it is also about Swedish society. I chose an intensive program: five days a week, 14 hours total per week. The faster I start speaking the language, the faster I can get a steady job. As a freelance, being able to set your own hours is nice, however, steady paycheck is nicer.

I'd expected long lines and lots of waiting at SFI, so I'd taken the second violet sock with me, but to my surprise there was very little waiting. Therefore there isn't much progress to report.

Today is the official start of the Everyday Cardilong and Critter Knitters Knit-a-thon. I'm planning to participate in both now, 'cause I discovered I had more acrylic yarn than I remembered. One blanket for local shelter, one for Critter Knitters, etc. I must admit I haven't even swatched for Deni sweater or cast on a stitch of a blanket yet, I finished the small web job before deadline instead.

Tomorrow I need to check my SCA clothes and gear to decide what to take with me. Shall I wear formal Burgundian for court and feast? Which of the maid's dresses would be best for daytime? Do I need to fix anything? Do I have time to make a cloak out of the handwoven fabric? What accessories to take? Decisions, decisions.

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Today I finished the first Novita sock.

The pattern is a very simple 4-stitch repeat:
Round 1: *yo, k2, k2tog; repeat from *.
Round 2: knit.

When I bought the yarn I wanted to add another color to tone down all the violet and lilac. I didn't have any that went well with it and didn't have time before the move to buy a natural white. These socks are meant to replace the hole-y Toes on Fire, so it doesn't really matter that they're Unrelieved Violet. On to the second sock.

The company I worked for in Estonia had a small HTML job for me. It should be finished before I leave for the Drachenwald Crown Tourney on Thursday. I'm also planning to visit family while in Tallinn.

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I've set the OKAY Print aside for a while and cast on a pair of socks from Novita's* 7 Brothers instead. 7 Brothers is DK weight (although this particular skein feels more like sport weight) smooth 4-ply 75% wool / 25% polyamide basic yarn. It is very hardwearing because of the polyamide, especially when socks are knit with 3mm or 3.25mm needles. It is the yarn that has never let me down. Ummm... I'd better stop gushing. In case you didn't notice, it's one of my favorite yarns. I haven't found a shop that sells Novita yarns here in Stockholm yet, but I can always shop when I'm in Tallinn.

Thanks to QueerJoe I've found the perfect pattern for Deni sweater: The Incredible, Custom-fit Raglan Sweater. Instead of casting on for the neck, I'll knit a hood instead and continue from there. I've got 1kg of yarn (2000 meters) and it should be enough, but if the sleeves turn out too short, I can unravel the hem. Perfect.

* Unfortunately their site is in Finnish only, but a picture is worth a thousand words. Right? Click on 'Neulonnan ideat' for patterns or 'Novita-tuotteet' for products and browse the subcategories. If you need translations, drop me a line.

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The Lana Grossa OKAY Print is unsalvageable. I just can't come up with anything to make it attractive to me again. Tried the Crusoe socks from Knitty, they were nothing special and, besides, I've already knit these socks once. I'm process oriented and having to knit something twice is taxing enough. Four times is right out. Tried the yarn doubled, but the beautiful colors got mixed up and muddied.

I decided to knit socks for CIC instead — less stitches means that the patterning will be different, straight stockinette for blog surf knitting and eventually somebody will be happy about them. I won't be trading the yarn because it has been ripped and reknit so many times.

Speaking of charities. Wendy and Liz are in the process of organizing a Critter Knitters Knitalong. My first impulse was to join, but then I thought that the shelters here in Stockholm would need blankets too; so I decided to join in spirit and knit blankies for local cats.

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Yay! I'm going to participate in a knitalong, hosted at Gibknits. I'm exited, this is my first knitalong. It will start on March 15th and with the motivation of the knitalong I just might keep knitting until the cardigan is finished. Not like some of my previous big projects that have been unraveled 'cause I'd never really finish them.

I'll knit the Deni sweater instead of Peace Fleece Everyday Cardigan because I already have yarn for it. For a pattern I'll try to come up with something like the reverse stockinette sweater in Adrienne Vittadini ad a few years back. Ever since I first saw it I've been in love with the ultimate simplicity and elegance of that design. I'll copy the overall look, but I'm going to try out raglan sleeves. This is going to be fun: first knitalong, first cardigan, first raglan. We'll see if I mess up or not.

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How is it possible to have a beautiful yarn like this

turn into something as ugly as this?

I bought the yarn because I liked the colors, they remind me of spring, but I don't like at all how it is knitting up. Maybe the yarn is salvageable if I knit it in a pattern that breaks up the colors? I'll try Crusoe from Knitty and if this doesn't work, maybe I can trade it for something else.

Some differences between Sweden and Estonia.

The deli meat prices are in hectograms, not kilograms.

Now that was a nasty surprise. I wanted to make a cheap, but very tasty "starving student" meal out of potatoes, onion and the cheapest cut of meat one can get in Estonia. There is more fat than meat in the cut that's why it's so cheap. The fat is essential because that's where you fry the potato slices. Well... First, I didn't find anything with enough fat. And second, the smoked ham I eventually found cost 10 times more than I'd anticipated. Ouch! The meal turned out well enough — one can substitute olive oil for fat, but it won't be as tasty.

The packages that don't fit through mail slot in the front door are delivered to a grocery store.

Hunh?! That's right: packages are delivered to ICA, a chain of grocery stores. Apparently Swedish government has decided that this system is cheaper to operate than proper postal system. Boggles my mind, but a lay person is not meant to understand what any government decides is best. ;)

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The new section to the website is finished and approved by the client. Whee!

The Toes on Fire socks developed a hole in the heel yesterday. In my experience acrylic doesn't hold up in socks at all. I've made two pairs and neither have lasted long, they've gotten holes while some of my much older wool socks only have thinner spots. In the future I must remember this and not fall for pretty colors.

I guess it's time to make a new pair. Wool this time. Remeber Vaire: wool!

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