From Malmö: Slottsträdgården in Late Summer

It's been a few weeks since the last post here — a big project I can't share yet, and before that, a trip home to Sweden.

Roses at the start of the walk.

The path through it — dahlias on both sides, the whole way down.

We went to Slottsträdgården in Malmö. Coffee and carrot cake first, then a walk round the garden. The dahlias stopped me — full bloom, and such range within one flower. Some huge and loose, petals falling every which way. Others small and completely symmetrical, coiled tight like the magenta ones, almost architectural up close.

One gladiolus stopped me too. Pale yellow shading into pink right at the petal edge, like strawberries and cream. That kind of soft gradient is harder to get right in paper than a flat colour change — worth remembering next time I need something to shift gradually rather than in one block.

Tight and symmetrical, almost architectural.

Spiked petals rather than the tight coil.

Soft where the magenta ones were tight.

Orange next to white, both from the same bed.

Zinnias and Queen Anne's lace.

The scale of it — full bloom, all at once.

The rosehips got me more, if I'm honest. We drink a rosehip soup in Sweden, nyponsoppa, usually with ice cream and almond biscuits. I had it constantly as a kid. Seeing them hanging there, that same deep orange-red, brought all of it straight back.

There was colour everywhere that day — dark red sunflowers backlit against the sky, zinnias in bright orange-red next to a loose head of Queen Anne's lace. Wilder than the dahlia beds, less arranged. Good to see both.

Like strawberries and cream.

Backlit, petals almost glowing at the edges.

The ones that got me most — nyponsoppa.

My mum also got out a skånsk yllebroderi my grandmother Astrid made her for her 40th — wool embroidery, dense with the same red, cream, and olive green running through the whole trip without me clocking it until I saw it laid flat. Horses, birds, flowers, all in the same repeating motifs, my mother’s initials and the year stitched into an oval at the centre. I've seen it before but hadn't really looked in years. The colour instinct in it isn't so different from what I keep reaching for in my own work.

It's put an idea in my head I keep coming back to — making something of my own that draws on those traditional ceremony textiles. Not a copy, but a piece that carries the same instinct: motifs repeated and layered, that particular red against black, made to be kept rather than used. Nothing concrete yet. Just an idea taking shape.

My grandmother's work, laid flat and seen whole for the first time in years — the pattern only really makes sense at this scale.

My mum’s initials and the year, stitched right into the centre — 1993, the year she made it.