Mirror selfie.

The back of the neck on this cardigan is too tight, like I suspected. Rip up and redo.

Yes, Eric offered to take a photo if it for me, but this was more fun.

What if it stayed all the way until Christmas?

Loads more snow today, and – in a nice coincidence in timing – they lit the lights on the spruce on Spånga Torg. It felt like Christmas even though there’s a whole month to go still.

We have snow. It’s nice that the cold came first, before the snow – now it stays on the ground instead of melting into slush.

The birds really appreciate the sunflower seeds we put out. Swarms of goldfinches and greenfinches. Blue tits and tree sparrows and nuthatches and magpies and blackbirds.

Now with the snow, the deer also come by to eat the bits that the birds spill.

Piano concert at the Stockholm Concert Hall, with Arkadij Volodos playing Aleksandr Skrjabin and Franz Schubert.

The concert leaflet describes Skrjabin as innovative and boundary-breaking. To me it just sounded dissonant and chaotic. I read that the brain releases dopamine both when it hears things in music that it recognizes or predicts, and when it is surprised. With Skrjabin, I felt there was nothing predictable at all so there was nothing to hang on to. No melody line to follow, no recognizably recurring phrases. It was like… stuff just happening, all the time. Music that’s a hundred years old, and it’s still too modern for me.

Schubert is always Schubert, though!

Volodos also played several extra pieces after the official programme, and the third of them was such a glorious piece of music that I didn’t even hang around to see if there might be more. There was just no way he could top that. Konserthuset kindly publishes updates to the concert programme after the fact, so I now know it was his own arrangement of La Malagueña, a flamenco piece originally written for the guitar I’d guess. You can see a somewhat blurry video of it here. There’s just… fingers absolutely everywhere, and I can’t see how could possibly hit all those notes with any kind of control, but clearly he does. Absolutely magnificent.

Speaking of Schubert, the last concert in the chamber music series that Eric and I go to together also started with Schubert. An octet by Schubert, and followed by another octet by Jörg Widmann, who wrote it as a tribute to Schubert’s octet. And my opinion here was the same – liked the Schubert, but Widmann’s octet was too un-melodious for my taste.

There’s almost more patch than original material in these cardigan sleeves.

I bought lamps to hang over the dining table. Which I’ve been wanting to do for years, but been put off by the hassle of having to find an electrician and figuring out how to hang them and whatnot. Now I have them, and it’s great.

The lamps have clearly spent a bit of time in a cardboard box, so the cables are all slightly wonky and the lamps hang just a little bit askew. I probably wouldn’t even notice, but they hang just at eye height, so I see the light of some of the lamps but not of the others, because they’re tilted away. It makes them look broken. I hope the cables even out with time and the weight of the lamps themselves. Otherwise, maybe a hairdryer could make them relax?

The embroidery club explored blanket stitch. For the first time during these exercises, I ran out of space before I ran out of things to try. Mostly because the organic, lacy blanket stitch (very much inspired by the works of Miriam Gielen) was so much fun that it grew and took up more space than its fair share.

Ingrid’s school had a concert and an art exhibition for parents, with performances and artwork by the students.

Art is Ingrid’s favourite class. She chose this school because they offered art as an elective, and she’s been lucky to get a wonderfully inspiring teacher. The school has an art programme – like Ingrid’s class is focusing on economics and law, you can have art as your focus – so they’ve got more resources than maybe some other schools might.

The two works that the “non-art-focus art class” has done this term are a monochrome study of light and shadow with a crumpled paper bag as a subject, and an abstract print using some fancy type of printer that I’ve forgotten the name of. Numbered copies! This was Ingrid’s take on the abstract print.

I bought a pair of “barefoot” shoes before the summer, and now they are my favourites.

A few months ago a colleague, who was curious about barefoot shoes, asked me if I had noticed any downsides to them at all. The only thing I could think of was the looks. Nobody would describe these as stylish. They’re not exactly ugly, and in comparison to some current shoe fashion, they’re pretty OK. At least they don’t look like a lumpy, swollen blob of rubber and plastic like too many sneakers do these days.

Otherwise they are perfect. Insanely comfortable – lightweight, flexible, soft. It’s like I’m wearing socks, but with some protection for the sole. I can walk in them all day and by the end of the day still not wish that I could just take my shoes off. I forget about them; they don’t even register.

Now that winter is coming, I’ve found their only downside: they’ve spoiled me for standard-shaped shoes. Since May I have barely worn any other footwear other than these or my sandals. Hiking boots, when needed, and rubber boots, but no other shoes. And now there will be snow and ice, which these shoes are not made for, so I need to start putting on winter boots, but I DON’T WANT TO.

Do I squeeze my feet into narrow boots for the hour or so that my commute takes, every day? Do I throw out my still-perfectly-good sheepskin-lined winter boots (that took me ages to find) and invest time in hunting for new ones?