We Eric put up the bird feeder this weekend. I’ve been watching it since then. Plenty of magpies, thus far, and some blue tits and nuthatches. But they’re few, and skittish still.

I attended beginners’ class in freeform crochet today. It was less structured than the embroidery course and more just “let’s try a few things”.

I think the longer format of the embroidery course suited me better – it gave me enough time to actually get a feeling for the process, what directions it could be taken and what angles I could try. But this was also fun. I’m already getting ideas for projects.

The outcome of an evening of freeform crocheting looks much messier than the result of an evening’s embroidery.

A quarter past four, and it’s twilight already.

On the plus side, Christmas/Advent/winter lights are starting to appear in the city.

Adrian reading The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, which he got assigned from school. I have very mixed feelings about this assignment. I’m glad the topic of the Holocaust gets covered, but I remember the book being so inaccurate that I’m afraid he’ll come away with a skewed picture.

The moment I saw it in all its shiny, red glory, I knew I wanted it, and when it turned out to fit me in size and cost no more than two lunches, I bought it without any hesitation.

Afterwards I started wondering if it screams too much midlife crisis and a desperate clinging-on to youth. Next thing, I’ll be wearing a skin-tight leopard-print dress. (No.)

Then I told myself to stop worrying and just enjoy it. So that’s what I was doing today.

It’s so dark in the afternoons and evenings, now that we’re back to winter time. Takes some getting used to. Plus it’s been cloudy, so I feel like it barely gets light even in the middle of the day. And it’s only going to get darker, and it’ll be three months before it gets lighter than this. Maybe we’ll have a bright, snowy winter.

Anyway, today being a Sunday and me having no work to do, I spent all the best daylight hours embroidering.

The swirly thing on fabric that Adrian painted got a few more swirls and feels done now. Its sibling that I painted myself is still waiting for me.

The pieces of patterned fabric gave me so many ideas that I ended up making four of them. I finished both the embellished one and the one with tentacles that Adrian asked for, as you can see in the photo, and two more where I had previously started exploring other ideas.

The patterned fabric I actually came up with a project for, which I’m really pleased about. I’d much rather use the embroidery than put it away in storage. I’ll let them rest for a week or two, then see if I want to add anything more, and if not, start assembling them into a fabric box.

We eat toast as part of our weekend breakfasts quite often. Nobody has time for toasting anything on weekdays, so breakfast then is either cereal or a simple sandwich.

The end slices are usually no good for toasting. They’re too thin, and the crust makes them curve when heated, so they toast unevenly. The edges are too dark while the middle is not crispy enough. I’m too thrifty to throw them away, though – one doesn’t throw away perfectly edible food just because it’s inconvenient in shape. Instead there’s a bag in the freezer where we dump all the end slices. (Or some of us just leave them in the original bread bag and shove it to one side in the bread drawer in the freezer, and then weeks later I wonder what’s with all the nearly-empty bags, and then I end up consolidating four bags of end slices into one.)

I’ve used the end slices for croutons in the past and used them for a deconstructed French onion soup, and for salads. Today I wanted to make bread pudding, which I haven’t eaten since I was a child. It was a thing in Estonia (saiavorm) but it’s virtually unknown in Sweden. I don’t think they even have a word for it.

There was no shortage of hits when I googled for recipes for saiavorm, but making use of them was harder. There was no agreement whatsoever when it came to proportions. When rescaled to about 400 g bread, one had 3 decilitres of sugar (or something like that, because the recipe was based on “half a loaf of sai” of unspecified size) while another had 2 to 3 tablespoons. One had one egg per one dl of milk; another had twice as much eggs as milk; a third had the opposite.

In the end I gave up on the recipes and just winged it. The end result both looked and tasted good, but was a bit too dry. Less bread next time, for the same amount of eggs, milk and apples. (Less bread, rather than more of the rest, because half of what we had would have been enough.)

My childhood version definitely had raisins, but I think it may have been without apples.

Nysse is still discovering new places in the houses that make good cat beds. Today we both scared each other when I found him sleeping in one of the storage baskets in the storage closet, on top of outgrown children’s outerwear, next to backpacks and rolls of toilet paper. I accidentally woke him when I came in there to put away a backpack from the Amsterdam trip. There wasn’t much light when I walked in there, and I’d never seen him there before, so the sudden movement of a dark shape in the corner gave me quite a turn.

While we were away in Amsterdam for three days and nights, one of Ingrid’s friends took care of Nysse. He couldn’t be here all morning and all evening, of course, so Nysse had to stay indoors for those days. Otherwise they’d likely just keep missing each other: Nysse wouldn’t know when the human is here and might arrive just after he leaves, for example, and then have no chance to get any food or water at all.

We bought some new cat toys for Nysse to make the three days feel less like imprisonment. He reportedly enjoyed each one for a while. But he really didn’t want to be an indoor cat. On the evening of the third day, the moment the door opened, he ran out as fast as lightning. A big part of it was probably because he much prefers pooping outside to using the litter box. And this is the cat who initially had to be carried and coaxed outside!

The toys now mostly languish unused. The fake-mouse-on-a-string can be fun for a few minutes, when someone dangles it in front of him and makes it come alive. But Nysse almost never plays with anything on his own. The wide world outdoors is much more interesting; the house is for eating and sleeping and cuddles.

Wednesday is Urb-it office day.

Urb-it’s office is on the seventh floor of a seven-storey office building. Which gives us a lovely rooftop terrace and striking views of central Stockholm, but also lots of stairs. There is a lift, of course (even though it only goes to the 6th floor) but the stairwell is actually pretty nice, spacious and clean and with windows providing plenty of daylight, so I often walk up all those seven floors. I haven’t managed to restart a proper exercise habit but I do my best to insert physical activity in everyday life where I can.