a busy morning
I woke more than once in the night with achy hips and minor leg cramps, one cramp in the calf bad enough I needed to get up and stand on it. So I finally got up at about 06:30 and did a half an hour pilates, which helped. I had thought to go back to sleep directly after, but by then, I was hungry, so I had breakfast.
Then I started a load of laundry. Gilbert was getting up around them, so we chatted for a while before he left to go meet his brother for their adventure plans for the day.
Then I baked four pasties from yesterday’s soup (there was only enough butter thawed for that much dough), before doing a quick video kall with Stephanie in Scotland. It has been too long since we chatted. Keldor got up and had breakfast while we were chatting.
Then it was time to check to see if I am happy with the fit at the waist for my New winter coat in progress. I was, so I packed my sewing and food for the day.
Rizza and Sture came by around then. He’s interested in house renovations, so we showd them the progress in the Create an attic bedroom project. Even though there are still a couple of spots where the insulation still needs covering, the temperature in the bedroom part of the attic was much warmer than the uninsulated part.
However, now that it is close enougv to winter that it is freezing at night, we decided that it was time to unpack the Dekorationsbrasa that we bought 2026-09-27. It is just as cute as it looked in the photo.
into town for a lecture
The Skellefteå Museum had a lecture on the big 1932 strike and ensuing conflict at Klemensnäs, a woodpulp/paper mill just outside of Skellefteå. The speaker, Maja Östlund, has recently completed a master’s thesis on the subject. We went because Keldor is especially interested in the “arbetarrörelsen” (Labour movement) that led to the 1938 Saltsjöbadsavtalet, which created the “Swedish Model” of regular agreements between unions and employers that pretty much ended the need for workers in Sweden to strike. The 1932 incident that the lecture focused on was one of several in that period in which either police (in this case), or military opened fire on the demonstrators. There were more than 1000 people demonstrating here that day, but, luckily, while a few people where hit (including a glancing blow to one guy’s temple), none died. Keldor says that his grandfather and granddad’s brother were both in the crowd, though they were too young to have been among the workers who were striking due to huge cuts in pay. (given that Keldor’s dad wasn’t born till 1944, the fact that Keldor knows his dad’s dad was there that day says rather a lot about the local significance of the conflict). One of the noteworthy parts of the conflict was the “vattenspruteindicenten”, where the reporter who was trying to get into the factory to take photos of the strike breakers was washed away by the high pressure water hose, which triggered the escalation of violence that transformed the demonstration into a riot, and, in the long run, helped lead to the Saltsjöbadsavtalet.
On our way to the lecture we stopped by Lidl, where we bought a timer based automatic cat feeder and a universal clamp, as well as some fruit and vegetables and snacks to eat directly. Then we dropped by Hubben to return Egils’ sword and water bottle he had forgotten at the training day we hosted last moth. He was busy building a Totoro cosplay costume, and it was fun to spend a couple of minutes helping get the rings attached to their suspending ropes, but we didn’t have mu time, so off to the lecture we went.
Smithy at Vallen vs relaxation at home
After the lecture we met Alfr and Clara at the Smithy at Vallen, where Keldor and Clara happily spent som hours making stuff, and Alfr watched fascinated. I stuck around for a short time, then the call of relaxation won, and I went home to curl up on the couch with a book—my first chance to read in two full weeks of extra busy activity!
By the time Keldor got home in the evening I had transitioned from reading and relaxing (by way of a hot shower and washing my hair) to working on my New winter coat again, this time looking at the fit, and deciding that yes, I do want to use the last of the Narrow heavy black wool to make another couple of skirt gores and add an additional panel to make the sleeves even puffier. Of course, this means that I need to find something else to make the pockets from. But, alas, I had already used several meters of that fabric to refurbish my old winter coat and make it bigger back in 2019. Having given the old one to Clara to mend, I can’t cannibalise it now for the fabric.
I spent a bit of time updating my blogs, and copying over my notes from the old coat project from Trello, until I realised that it was getting late and I was super sleepy, so I did a quick yoga, without opening the group yoga zoom room, and went to bed,
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