We played Exit, the card game. For the second time, and I really thought I’d blogged about the first time, but now I can’t find any posts about it, so maybe I didn’t.

Exit is an escape room game to play at home, with the same kind of cryptic clues, and the same kind of three-digit codes that are frequent in physical escape rooms. The less imaginative escape rooms can sometimes feel like one never-ending collection of combination padlocks; more interesting ones have more physical solutions like physical keys, magnets, etc. The card game is obviously limited in what it can do, so three-digit codes it is.

There’s a whole bunch of different games in the Exit series, with different difficulty levels. We did one at level 2½ (out of 5) the first time and found it just right. Now that we know how the games work, we could up the ante, I thought, and bought one at level 3.

That turned out to be overly ambitious. The four of us (myself, Ingrid, Adrian, and my brother) struggled for two hours and had to use several hints before we finally made it to the end. And we were quite done in by that time. A couple of the hints just gave us a missing detail when we had gotten almost there (like giving us the right measurement units for a puzzle) but with one of the puzzles, once we saw the answer, we truly felt that there was no chance we would have figured it out on our own.

If we played another at the same level in the next few weeks or so, we’d do better, I’m sure. We definitely learned things, like that mistake we made about measurement units, which was relatively obvious after the fact. And we should have taken a proper break in the middle to rest our brains. Also, don’t let one person be in sole charge of any piece of the game equipment, because then everybody else learns to ignore that piece, and important details about it may end up being missed by everybody.

Who knows how much of this we’ll retain until next time, if it takes more than a couple of weeks. But we’re definitely not moving up in level!

We’ve had the opportunity to borrow a giant Lego Taj Mahal set – larger than we’d be willing to pay for ourselves – and now we’re building it. Mostly Adrian, but I’m also helping out.

Mostly I help by sorting pieces. There’s something satisfying about it. Both about the sorting itself, and about the end result, and about knowing that Adrian has a good point to start from.

Beige; yellow; all other colours. Mid-sized white pieces (at least three units long and full height), small white pieces, flat white pieces, large stick-like white pieces, and a whole separate bowl with dozens of turntable pieces for the tiled floor.

We found a bottle of last year’s glögg in the pantry. I don’t believe in best-before dates too much, so we opened and tried it.

Last year’s glögg flavour was mojito: glögg with a flavour of lime and mint. Quite a bizarre combination, since there is no overlap in ingredients between mojito and glögg. Well, apart from the sugar. And their flavours don’t match or complement each other, either. Mojito is fresh and cold and tart; glögg is warm and round and spicy.

The idea of mixing the two was not a good one. We tried it; I was the only one to want to taste it twice. Then we poured it down the drain.

Marketing people want everything to have “this season’s variety”. Clothes, shoes, Christmas gifts… and glögg. There’s rarely a point in having a favourite model of sandals, or even of socks, or of glögg, apparently, because when the old ones have run out and you want more, your favourite has already been retired in favour of something newer and shinier.

We leave a space on the windowsill for Nysse where he can sit and watch the birds and dream of hunting them. The twitch in his tail is a clear tell.

On the one hand, it’s 15°C in the living room.

On the other hand, we’re paying around 500 SEK per day (that’s 50 EUR for you Europeans) for electricity right now. Heating more would cost even more.

So I guess I’ll just get another blanket.

18°C used to be the point where I would turn up the radiators. With these prices – and with the visibility we have from our new electricity contract – I’ve had to learn to frame things differently. Heating is something you do at night when prices are lower. During the day you just dress warmly. Three layers of clothes is normal. At least two of the layers should be wool-based, preferably.

Which is why I’ve ordered more warm woollen sweaters and undershirts. Buying second hand, I could literally get a sweater or two every week with the money I’m not paying for more heating. And then at least I get a sweater out of the deal, instead of feeling like I’m just burning money.

In a couple of weeks, we’ll also be getting a heat exchanger installed. Which will unfortunately cost quite a bit more than a few sweaters, but on the other hand will do more to keep us all warm for longer. I’m counting down the days.

In the meantime, the next ten days will be the worst in sight. The weather will be really cold; Sweden’s largest nuclear power plant will be undergoing emergency maintenance; hydropower plants will be running at reduced capacity to let ice form on the rivers; wind power will be limited because it’s less windy than usual.

The book with knitting patterns had some with cats, so I had to make another Christmas ball.

Slightly glittery yarn in red and white seemed suitably Christmassy, but now that the ball is done, the cats look like demons with blood-red eyes and bloody paws.

We did something wild and crazy today and bought a new kind of pasta. Eating it was such a ridiculous experience – we literally spent most of dinner laughing and joking about the pasta – that I had to memorialize it.

Bucatini is what happens when spaghetti begets children on macaroni. Long like spaghetti, but slightly thicker, although not quite as thick as macaroni, and with a hole in the middle. It turned out to have all the bad sides of both.

Like spaghetti, the bucatini are so long that they don’t fit into a normal pot. Spaghetti softens after just a minute, though, so you can push them down into the pot and they’ll soon be submerged in the boiling water. Bucatini take a much longer while to soften, by which time the bottom ends have already had time to stick to each other, while the top ends are still hard. So one half of each ends up softer than the other half.

Like spaghetti, the bucatini are so long that you can’t just fork them into your mouth. Unlike spaghetti, though, they’re too thick and stiff to be wound around a fork. We next tried cutting them in pieces but then they were too narrow to easily stab, and too long and stiff still to easily scoop up. Whatever we did, it was awkward. It’s like the bucatini are not designed to be eaten. I’m sure there is a trick, because must be a reason for their existence, but I don’t plan on ever trying them again.

Another type of pasta that looks better than it works is orecchiette. I’ve tried cooking them several times and every time they stick to each other. They’re shaped like little hats, and they stack as well as hats, too, and then they stay that way. I tried turning the heat up higher so the water would boil more vigorously; I tried using more water; I tried stirring more frequently; I even tried adding oil to the water. Nothing worked, and I always ended up with clumps of orecchiette. So I’ve given up on them.

Last year I got a book with traditional Scandinavian knitting patterns as a gift from a colleague. I had already been thinking of reciprocating with something knitted, based on a pattern from that book. Now that this year’s Christmas gift is “something hand-knitted”, I just have to. Except he already got a pair of socks from me last year, and repeating that would be too boring. And other garments and accessories are hard to gift when I don’t know what he needs. I couldn’t come up with anything better than a Christmas ornament, so I knitted a ball. It came out nicer than I had hoped for. I like the concept and I think I might make more, for other people and perhaps also for our own tree.

Stockholm Early Music Festival, Christmas Edition.

I’ve been on SEMF’s mailing list for years, but never actually made it to any of their concerts. The main festival is usually in the beginning of June and clashes with the end of the school year. And early December of course is always a busy time. This year, though, Eric and Adrian were away on a scout hike, so we couldn’t do anything family-Christmassy anyway, so I could take the whole afternoon and evening for concerts.

The German Church is a lovely concert venue with beautiful acoustics. Isn’t it wonderful that we humans have evolved the capability to appreciate music, and the capability to make music ourselves, and also to construct buildings to make the most of both?

The mini-festival consisted of three concerts (plus an optional extra late-night one which I skipped).

The first one, with Finnish Ensemble Gamut, I found incredibly boring. I’m glad I bought tickets for the whole afternoon because if I’d just heard this one I would have been utterly disappointed. It was just an endless drone with little variation. There were instruments, and there was singing, and it definitely had a melody – but apart from the songs with elements of Finnish runo songs, they all sounded so same. The only way I knew that one song ended and another started was because the ensemble all switched instruments. And the singer’s mannered way of singing really didn’t suit my taste. I was nearly falling asleep and had to take out my knitting to keep awake.

The second concert, with The Nordic Baroque Band, was much better. All instrumental music, with baroque versions of violin, viola, cello and flute. (Today I learned that the baroque violin is held differently from the modern one – not squeezed between chin and shoulder but just pressed against the shoulder. And the baroque cello is held between the legs, without an endpin.)

The third one (Nordic Voices), in contrast, was all-vocal, but equally good, if not better. Their repertoire ranged all the way back to medieval polyphonic liturgies (Olavsmusikken). Beautiful, enchanting, soaring, intimate.

13|37 Christmas party at Lux on Lilla Essingen. Great food, nice venue, and I was lucky with the company at my table, so it was a great night.