Ironing is one of those household tasks that would be awful if I had to do it all the time, but that can be rather relaxing and enjoyable in small amounts, especially when accompanies by good music or an interesting podcast.

Nysse has a deep-seated rivalry with one of the neighbour cats. I think there is severe disagreement about territory. The other cat, who moved here relatively recently, seems to think that our garden is part of his territory, while Nysse of course does not agree.

They stand face to face and yowl at each other. Sometimes they swipe at each other; that’s when I think Nysse comes home with loose tufts of fur.

This morning they had a stand-off in the other cat’s yard, just across the street, loudly enough that I heard it through closed doors and windows while I was sitting at my work desk. I poked my head out to see what was going on, and saw the man in the house do the same through his front door.

Things must have escalated. Fifteen minutes later, Nysse came in, dripping blood on the floor from a ragged wound in one of his ears, and a dozen tufts of fur sticking out all over his torso. I had to wash it out in the bathroom, which didn’t make him any happier.

On the one hand I hope he won over the other cat, so that maybe he can have more peace in our yard without someone else muscling in. On the other hand, of course, I don’t want any cat to be hurt. I do wish they could just ignore each other. But if some stranger suddenly started hanging out in my garden and saying “it’s theirs now”, I wouldn’t give up without a fight either.

Here’s a photo of an earlier stand-off, from a couple of weeks ago, before the snow came.

Four days in a row of shovelling. The pile in front of the root cellar is a metre tall by now.

Snow ploughs have been by to sort of clear the street, but when there’s so much of it, it just ends up along the sides of the road. Normally the street is wide enough for two cars to meet; now it’s barely the width of a car and a half.

After several days of fresh snow with little wind and no melting, the garden is at its most “winder wonderland” look.

Boatloads of snow.

Nysse doesn’t have a litterbox (I decommissioned the one we had when he hadn’t touched it in months) and does his business outside. In this weather, he walked a few metres away from the stairs, dug a little hole in the snow, covered it up with more snow, and came straight back inside.

It’s not particularly cold, even. Just very, very snowy.

I was glad to still be invited to the Bergheden family Christmas, even though I am not really a Bergheden anymore.

I made puff pastry mini pies and an orange & saffron cheesecake. The first time in many, many years that I attempted a cheesecake. It took forever, cracked in the middle, but tasted delicious. When I offered Ingrid to decorate it, she jumped at the opportunity, and turned the crack from a bug into a feature.

Ingrid and I still do the crosswords in Dagens Nyheter. This weekend we even took on one made by Håkan, whose brain works in strange ways and whose vocabulary is most weird. Normally we don’t allow ourselves any outside tools, but with Håkan’s we need more help. It’s OK to use the internet to confirm a word that looks to be the answer, if we don’t even recognize it as a valid Swedish word.

From today’s crossword we learned ten new words, including töva (= dröja), ami (= halsduk), eda (= strömvirvel), dat (= dåd) and ria (= torkhus).

Here is the white dress in all its glory.

It came out just the way I had envisioned it. Fits well, looks great. By far the most elegant thing I have created.

And the most labour-intensive one. I tried to roughly estimate how many stitches I knit, and came up with about 133 000.

I am very grateful to my friend in Estonia who gave me the yarn that started this project. It’s a lovely fine vintage wool yarn, probably hand-spun and unbleached. I don’t think I could have found anything like it from a commercial source. I held it double with a silk mohair, and the end result is soft and woolly, but still drapes well.

This is no superwash merino yarn, the kind that almost doesn’t feel like wool, and it definitely feels woolly against my skin. Not so that bothers me – just so that I am aware of it. Like a gentle reminder that it is there, and it is wool. (I’m writing this several weeks later, after I’ve had a chance to wear it to a family Christmas party for several hours.)

I had planned to add embroidery to the dress, to make it look less stark. Now that I have it in front of me, I rather like it in all its simplicity. I think I’ll hold off on the embroidery for now.

It started snowing heavily yesterday and kept going all night. The weather service issued red alerts due to heavy snow and heavy wind, telling people in some areas to avoid driving completely. Not just “stay home if possible” but more like “stay at home because emergency services won’t be able to reach you”. Up to 50 cm of snow was promised in some places, and with strong winds it will pile into deep drifts that you just can’t drive through.

The worst hit parts were two or three hundred kilometres north of here – not that far on a Swedish scale. Down here it didn’t get that bad (we only got yellow warnings, later upgraded to orange) but we still got plenty of snow.

It’s a giant hassle for everyone who needs to get to places, and for those who need to clear the streets, but I love it. I don’t mind shovelling the snow. I love the way the world is bright and light all of a sudden. It feels like real winter, instead of that dreary gray limbo we had in December.

And it’s brought so many more birds to our feeder!

Nysse was snuck out just as we came in from looking at all the fireworks and didn’t come home all night. I was worried.

Then at like four o’clock in the morning someone started yanking on the front door, loud enough to wake me. What kind of idiot tries to break into a house at this time? Some drunkard who’s gotten lost? No, Morris the neighbour cat. He knows how door handles work, and had the door not been locked, it would have opened for him.

The noise annoyed me enough that I let him in. In the morning he went out but later came back again and actually stayed for cuddles. Maybe his family is away celebrating New Year elsewhere?