Dancing on the deck in a new old skirt

Me and Karolin

What a great weekend I had! It was midsummer here in Sweden, and the sun was very un-traditionally out and shining! We kicked off the weekend on Thursday with a potlock for the instructors and volunteers in Swingum, and of course lindy hop on the sun-deck afterwards. A bit like last year which you can find here and here.

The music came from a vintage non-electrical grammofon.

I wore my newly altered and now wearable skirt (more about that later in this post). Here I'm demonstrating the width of it to Elin.


A summerpicture of Malin.


For the main course we were too hungry to have time for photos, but here's the desserts (both of the cakes were made by me). I did a raspberry-cheesecake and a blueberry pie. The blueberries I picked myself last summer. Can't wait for the season of berry-picking to begin! =)

As for the alteration of the skirt: This is a skirt that has just hung in my closet for ten years. I bought it in France, on a school trip. I loved it, but the length was 1) a bit unpractical for such a wide skirt and 2) not very flattering (as shown below).
Also, I really don't like elastic waists, they always dig in so uncomfortably.

So I shortened it from above, made a waistband and inserted a zipper in the back seam. A point of interest: the skirt actually only have one vertical seam! The 7 meters in the last wide section is in one piece! I'm not even going to guess how long the solid blue fabric at the bottom is... The only tricky part with the sewing was getting a seam allowance wide enough for a zipper out of the overlock-seam in the back, but it worked!


Not the best pose, but here's the new old skirt! All comfy and with a much more practical hem length.


I know I was complaining all winter about how dark it was, and it was just that dark. Here's the reward for enduring the winter darkness and cold; the northern view from my balcony! This is really straight to the north, at 30 minutes past midnight some evening last week. Summer solstice: I adore thee!
Summer in these parts rarely get very warm (it's actually warmer inlands and further north), but I don't really miss it, as long as I get the light at night. I love how it feels; a bit gray, fragile and cool. I remember the summer I spent in California, and that I felt a bit cheated on the real summer. It was hot, it was sunny, but it was pitch-black at night. And I never really felt that it was summer. Strange, isn't it? =)

Has summer arrived in your part of the world? Or maybe even winter, if you're on the other side of the world? What is summer to you?

Love, Erika