First week in Stockholm!

posted June 6 2026

Today marks my 6th day in Stockholm, Sweden and I feel like I have gotten so much done already and am so excited for what else will happen during this summer. As I feel like my last blog was perhaps a tad bit too long, I'll just highlight the more important events that have happened so far.

Do you guys know about the youtube channel/game series called JetLag? Here it is if you have never heard of it and want to check them out. The day after I arrived (June 3rd), I played the hide and seek version throughout Stockholm with my boyfriend, his brother and a friend! I played this last year when I visited Stockholm in late August before the fall semester started, and it was extremely fun so being able to play it again was exciting. We started this game rather late, well actually because I was checking out the looms at this craft association near where I am staying, so we couldn't play as many rounds as we did previously. If you haven't heard of it before, check it out! It may seem childish at first to hear someone say that playing hide and seek as adults is fun... but its more complicated than just that! And it is throughout an entire city using just their trains rather than just a small walkable location.

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On the 4th, I went to something called SIWI day, which was an annual event at the place where I am interning! For those of you who don't know, I'm working at SIWI (Stockholm Interational Water Institute), within a project called ReForMit(Resilience of Forest-based climate change Mitigation) to help write a stakeholder engagement paper. I can go into the office to talk to my SIWI colleagues, but I also have collaborators at KTH (the Royal Institute of Technology) in Stockholm, PIK (Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research) in Potsdam which is in Germany for those of you who don't know, and the lead researcher in Gothenburg.

On this day, I met almost everyone who works at SIWI, which is not a lot of people! They all have very interesting backgrounds, such as one person being from Belgium and we talked a little about languages and dialects in both Belgium and China, then I had a conversation with someone about knitting, weaving and dyeing fabrics using natural dyes -- I totally did not expect someone else to be so into these things as I am, she was SO excited -- there was also someone else from the US interning there!

This day was full of workshops, midsommar games and fika! I found this to be an awesome first day and icebreaker as it wasn't as stressful as icebreakers usually are, and it was more natural. After the first workshop, they had us all wear these midsommar crown: pictured to the right. For midsommar games, we played things like spoon races (I heard that they are typically with eggs, though we did them with limes), pen in a bottle, and some others that I wished I remembered the names of! Fika included a chocolate cake with raspberries, pastries, fruit and tea/coffee. Lunch was also provided with vermicelli, salad and options for no protein, shrimp or chicken.

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After all of this, I took a trip real quick to this yarn shop nearby so that I could 1. see their collection but also 2. ask if they knew if there were any shops in town that sold weaving yarn, mainly yarn on cones. While I could in theory either buy yarn balls for the warp or spin wool for that part, it would take an extraordinary about of time compared to purchasing the warp yarn. Additionally, there is inevitably going to waste yarn with the warp and it hurt me to think about dyeing something just for it be unused. ADDITIONALLY, I do want to say that yarn can be dyed on the loom to create patterns, so while I wasn't necessarily planning on it, I may do that for my project.

All of this is to say: I went to Litet Nystan and they told me that only Svensk Hemslojd would have it in store.

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On Friday, I had the mission to hit all of these thrift stores (and others!) in order to get local Swedish weaving books or yarn, and some other items I needed. My first stop was to go to Odenplan, to visit an area that I had been to already. On Norrtullsgatan lies Aderton Antikvariat, a rare/vintage bookstore and Myrorna, a thrift store! Aderton Antikvariat honestly had some good books for ok prices but they didn't contain enough interesting patterns or had too much history in them. While it is still cool- not what I needed. Myrorna had some colorful thick embroidery floss? (If I can even call it that) and a weaving patterns book. I thought the colors would be good if I couldn't dye them and the book was full of patterns. I got both for around 5 dollars!

Next, I went north on that same street to this other yarn shop: Wincentgarner. They didn't have any weaving yarn, though we had a good conversation about spinning, weaving and potential websites or facebook groups that I could join. They recommended buying balls of yarn for the warp but I really thought that might've been a waste of money (as it would be more expensive) and stuck with going to Svensk Hemslojd to see if they had weaving yarn next.

I had checked their website the night before just to make sure that they had weaving yarn, and I couldn't find anything to be honest. So I wasn't expecting much when I went down to their store. But lo and behold.... colorful wool yarn, batting, and yarn on cones. It was like a feast on my eyes. Literally. And they had weaving tools which I had seen online, but that wasn't what I wanted or needed.

Look at that!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyways I chose to buy some green batting as it is quite hard to naturally dye things green without uhh struggling and some white yarn for the warp of my tapestries.

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For this last bit of today's blog, I'd like to share some things I as I was taking a walk in the forest after dinner.

Orange Birch Bolete	Presumably Crown Tipped Coral
Deer	Lily of the Valley