I finished my Minoru jacket a while ago but I’ve been waiting for some nice weather to take some photos outside. Only problem is that nice weather is a rare commodity when you live on the west coast of Sweden. Yesterday I gave up waiting, grabbed the camera and me and my hubby headed out for a walk in the nearby park. After strolling around a bit, we found stone stairs leading up a hill and it was after we’d climbed half way that we realized that we were standing in the middle of an old ski jumping hill! Since there’s rarely any snow in this town, I find the construction of a the ski jumping hill quite hilarious.

This is where I realized that I was standing in the middle of a ski jumping hill

… almost at the top!

I’m pretty sure there’s usually a sign saying ” don’t feed the animals”, but that was completely ignored by some. Me, I just enjoyed watching.

I’m very happy with how my Minoru turned out. Most of the changes I made to the pattern are covered in my post about the muslin. However, there where still a couple of surprises. First one was the instructions for how to sew the cuffs to the arms. It’s a bit tricky to get it right, but it’s perfectly doable to sew everything together in one go without having to stitch everything by hand.

The second issue was that I had to shorten the waist-band a bit because of the front pockets and I think that affected the fitting a bit in the front.

And last, I found that I had a hard time getting the bottom hem to match up perfectly. Perhaps I made some error when I traced the pattern because I ended up with too much fabric and had to make a couple of pleats just to make it work. Nothing is visible on the outside though.

Other than that, it was fun to make and pretty straight forward :)

The collar – of course with my Totoro pin I got at the Ghibli museum in Mitaka.

Adding the tag always makes me happy :)

Added single welt pockets with the same tartan fabric as the lining.

Metal zipper and arm

Bottom hem from the inside of the jacket, covered by the lining.

The Minoru jacket

Now, back to the awesome ski jumping! When I got home I had to dig into the history of the ski jumping hill. It turned out I was right in thinking that it was rather old because, according to Wikipedia, it was built in 1902. However, in 1904 the hill was already too small. Besides, there’s not much snow in Gothenburg anyway so it was decided that a new hill should be built. But someone refused to give up the idea and in 1921, it was decided that the hill should be renovated and the whole thing was financed by the government because there was a big problem with unemployment. “Sweet deal!” I reckon all the ski enthusiasts said as the work began. The funny thing is that when the constructions were finished in 1923, there was not enough snow so the opening ceremony was postponed one year. Lol.

Here are two more pictures to celebrate this Scandinavian “bridge to nowhere”.

Right in the middle of the hill

At the top!