Cirkus Cirkör with Ingrid and Adrian, at Dansens Hus. Tipping Point involved a lot of climbing and balancing on teetering structures of steel pipes. I liked the tensegrity-based designs a lot.

The most stunning part was a trapeze number, both visually and in terms of skill. Had I been their official photographer, knowing the programme and the timing in advance, being able to position myself optimally in the hall, I know exactly what moments I would have tried to capture, and what angles. It was so obvious that I went to their press photos looking for that obvious best shot – and it just wasn’t there. Obviously what was obvious to me was not obvious to others.

Picture this, but with plenty more space below them to show the height, and shot from further to the right so you get the artists more clearly in profile for that pure and elegant graphical curve:

My first year after the divorce. That deserves a post of its own, so I’ll leave it at that for now.

Adrian and Ingrid are here every other week. The move on Sunday evenings is a bit of a hassle for everyone, but in general I think we’ve all settled in well into the new routines.

The divorce was a trigger to cleaning out stuff in all kinds of corners of the house, from old CDs to decades-old phone bills. Cleaning out the basement came with bonus infestation of mice.

2025 was also my first year at Active Solution, after seven years at tretton37, which imploded spectacularly, ending in a bankruptcy last January. Active Solution as employer is as similar to tretton37 as I could find, and I brought Sortera with me as a client, so the change was much smaller than it could have been. Since I don’t actually work with any of my colleagues, it’s taking time for me to get to know them and feel like I’m part of the gang.

The two company conferences have been most beneficial in that aspect: actually spending time together, talking about coding, getting to know each other. First an amazing trip to Monte Isola in April (day 1, day 2, day 3), and in the autumn a weekend sailing to an island in the archipelago.

Other travels included the usual trip to Estonia, which was as it always is: meeting friends and family, having fun. New for this year was my first ever time on a SUP board.

In August Ingrid and I had a long weekend in the Stockholm archipelago (day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4). The archipelago is almost too close to home – I’ve never spent any significant time there. This was a great introduction and I plan to do more of it in the future.

During autumn break, Adrian and I went to London. It’s important to me, one of my favourite places in the world, and I have so many memories from there, that I wanted to share it with Adrian. (day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4).

I also did two four-day hikes on the Sörmlandsleden trail, one from Hälleforsnäs to Katrineholm (stages 23 to 27) and the other from Kolmården to Katrineholm (32 to 27). I think I’ve done about half of the entire trail now. Might be done before retirement if I continue at this pace, haha.

Other hobbies were mostly craftsy. Mostly I knitted a lot, unsurprisingly. The larger projects this year were one orange sweater, one red cardigan, and one white dress (of which I haven’t been able to post a final photo because of my broken laptop). In between there were socks and hats and such, as well as a pair of slippers (notable because they were my first intentionally felted item).

At my embroidery club, the highlights include me finishing the Stockholm scene as well as our textile printing workshop.

I baked more than I’ve ever done before. Bread, karask, cakes, buns, Christmas goodies. Eric was always the baker in our house – he was both more interested and (as a result) more experienced. I am not willing to go without all the good stuff so I’ve learned. Cakes are not a challenge – just follow a recipe and you’ll be good. But breads and buns require technique and timing and experience. Mine have all come out OK, most even really good, with one or two notable exceptions. I don’t feel confident about my bread-baking skills at all, so every success feels like a major win.

In the garden, I finished planting the area in the front corner.

In other news, I switched to stronger glasses – and should probably upgrade again, I suspect.

Of the wider world, the one thing worth mentioning is the proliferation of AI everywhere.

Ingrid got her driver’s license and finished gymnasium and celebrated it with garden party. She’ll be doing military service starting in March and filled in most of the gap with a 4-month paid internship at Transdev.

Adrian did a week-long work experience “thing” at a pizzeria and started his last year of primary school.

My felted slippers didn’t even last a year before getting big holes in them.

I could make new ones – I even have an idea about what I might want to change to make them felt better and last longer – but that seems wasteful. Instead I bought a needle felting kit and some raw wool to patch them up.

I’ve never done any needle felting, and with the waxing experiment fresh in my mind, I was leery of the project. It turned out to be super easy and I was done in no time. The first mend was a bit lumpy but the next ones were better, and even the lumpy one evened out after I walked on it for a bit.

Buying yarn for a new pair of slippers would absolutely have been cheaper. But I’ve learned something new, and hopefully I’ll be able to use this stuff for some other mending project in the future. Or for these same slippers when they get new holes – the way the yarn has gone shiny on the sole, I can see it’s going to happen.

The knitted white dress is pretty much done! I set myself the goal of finishing it this year, and I’m going to make it. I only have the hem to finish now.

The skirt has curled up every time I’ve tried the dress on. It’s getting a folded hem and a lead weight cord (the kind that is often used for curtain hems) inside that to straighten it out.

I started sewing a winter skirt last season but then got sidetracked and never finished it. Now it’s cold again and I want something thick and warm and long and cosy to wear. Plus it will be nice to get that project pile off my sideboard.

I’m piecing it together from leftover fabric from the red skirt and the brown skirt and some new cream-coloured wool that I bought at the crafts festival last year.

I don’t have a clear idea of what the skirt will look like, but I found two pieces of red that are about the right shape and size for a yoke-ish part. While I ponder the rest of the design, I can get started on the pockets.

Nysse, as usual, had his own ideas of what a pile of wool fabric is good for.

The one thing on my Christmas wish list was a book with porridge recipes. I’m a fan of both traditional oatmeal porridge, and grain-based porridge-like savoury meals. The book seemed to have lots of inspiring ideas for broadening my porridge repertoire, for breakfast as well as lunch/dinner.

Here’s a luxury breakfast porridge mostly based on a recipe from the book, with caramelized banana and a peanut butter sauce. Somewhat simplified: you’re supposed to sprinkle a coconut crumble on top that you prepared in advance (I just replaced it with some coconut flakes) and the sauce was supposed to be made with tahini which I didn’t have so I used peanut butter instead.

The result looks fancy and tastes fancy but didn’t even take longer to make than an ordinary porridge. The banana caramelizes in minute or two, and the peanut butter sauce didn’t take longer either, so I got both done while the porridge itself was still cooking.

I like the taste of peanut butter but not the texture. It’s so thick that it’s difficult to distribute on the porridge. Mixing it with a teaspoon of water and another one of honey turned it into a sauce that was much easier to handle.

This is absolutely going on my breakfast recipe shortlist.

I have a bunch of beeswax cloth wraps. Bought some, got some as gifts. Managed to destroy some when I forgot a piece of fruit in it that then got mouldy.

Some are old and have lot most of their waxiness. You can buy blocks of wax to re-apply to the cloths, so they become properly waterproof and stiff again. They even include a sheet with instructions. Melt it, brush it on, put the cloth between sheets of baking paper, iron it, “quickly pull off the paper”.

It turned out to be really, really difficult. The wax solidified as soon as it left the pot, in big ugly clumps. There was no hope whatsoever of brushing it out. I thought that maybe ironing it would distribute it more evenly, but when I ironed it, the wax started leaking out on the sides in some places, while there was still too little in others. And finally, pulling off the paper took half the wax with it.

Making wax wrappers has grown into a whole cottage industry, plenty of people manage do it. How can it be so hard?

In any case, I gave up. I’m willing to pay money to skip this mess and let other people do this for me.

This December has been unusually dark and dreary. News outlets reported a week ago that Stockholm had seen less than an hour of sunlight during the first half of the month. Reportedly 1934 holds the record with zero sunlight hours during the entire month.

The whole thing was universally depressing. It got to the point where people at work interrupted meetings to point out reflected sunshine on a tall building two blocks away. Look, a glimpse of the sun!

We’ve finally had some longer stretches of sunlight the past couple of days, and today was the first full day of clear skies, sandwiched between two clear nights as well. It felt like an oppressive weight was lifted off of the world.

Even at night, a clear sky makes a difference. Compared to heavy cloud cover, a proper dark night sky feels… well, not brighter, exactly, but lighter, somehow. It has a luster of its own, and there is a feeling of openness and space.