For the first time in forever, we have a clear sky. I went out to chase the sun. Which was a real challenge, because even in the middle of the day it is so low that you can’t see it unless you find a really wide open space.

I drove to Järvafältet nature reserve and walked around the edges of its fields. Even then, distant trees often kept me from the sun.

Then I remembered the Hansta hill. If there is sun anywhere, surely the top of a hill will be the place for it.

You can really see here just how far the shadows of very normal trees reach.

I’ve had this ivy for years and never had any problems with it. And now all of a sudden it just died. From one day to another, all the leaves dried up, and that was that. Not even just one shoot – the whole thing.

I did move it from the bathroom to the living room some months ago, so this was its first winter in this window. But it used to stand in the window next to my desk for years and didn’t have a problem with it then. Maybe it didn’t like the draft from the heat exchanger?

The tulip bulbs in the flower pot on my front porch think it’s spring. I hope that the green shoots can survive the actual winter weather that will come soon.

Christmas is almost here. Ingrid, Adrian and I decorated the tree today; Nysse watched with great interest.

Then I made mince pies.

In the past I’ve mostly stayed out of this project – Eric was always the master baker, and my mother sometimes came here for a Christmas baking session, so there wasn’t room or need for me to get involved. They always made it seem very tricky: the filling bubbled out of the pie, the edges didn’t stay closed. Either I was lucky, or I somehow absorbed their learnings by osmosis – my first attempt came out great. Not picture perfect – there was a little bit of leakage – but much better than I expected, based on watching them work.

The body of the striped sweater is done. Now I need to do something about all the yarn ends.

I didn’t even cut the yarn for every stripe – only when it was unused for two centimetres or so. Even so, they are SO MANY. I regret that choice; I should have just lived with the long floats.

My laptop died today, after nearly eight years of loyal service.

The charging port has been unreliable for months. Yesterday the charging cable head got blisteringly hot and wouldn’t charge any more. At first it looked like it was a problem with the charger – I plugged in a different charger and all looked good. Percentages going up, no overheating. Today, though, even the other one wouldn’t work. The battery is old enough that without a charger I can get maybe a couple of hours’ of use out of it.

I have been planning to buy a new laptop since this spring, not only because of the worn-out battery but because the old one is old. It won’t let me upgrade the operating system because the hardware doesn’t support the latest version, and that in turn means that I cannot update the Office package, and some other software. So it really is time.

Nevertheless I kept postponing buying a new one because there were always other, more time-sensitive purchases to be made. Now all the delaying left me with the worst timing possible: not only because of money (of which I have less than usual due to Christmas gifts, and just having paid for flights and hotels for a vacation in February) but also because all the shops will be full of last-minute Christmas shoppers. I’ll have to manage until past Christmas Eve at least.

My work laptop (which is what I’m using this moment) will fill part of the gap in the meantime but I have no way to process or even access the photos from my camera, so I won’t be posting any of those for a while.

Meanwhile I will be off to research laptops. Do I stick with a Macbook, which I like and am used to? If I get a Windows laptop for about half the price, will I regret it daily for the next five years?

The website that had a recipe for “the ultimate lussebullar” also had one for “the ultimate Christmas wort bread”. The former was so great that I didn’t even go looking for an alternative recipe, just went straight for this one when I found it.

Baking any kind of bread in this cold house takes a lot longer than what the recipes say. I now turn on the radiator in the kitchen, even when I’m not cold myself, so that I can set the bread dough to rise next to it. Otherwise it takes forever and I’m not even sure that the dough will actually rise fully.

The result was absolutely delicious – just as dark and moist and fluffy and flavourful as a good wort bread should be.