The piano recital series at Konserthuset. Pierre-Laurent Aimard with Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier, Part 2. Lovely, but also rather intense, with 140 minutes of focused listening. I was running out of energy towards the end and maybe a little bit less enraptured with the last four pairs or so.

Several parties in the rows in front of me left in the interval. I absolutely support walking out of a concert that isn’t doing it for you (if you can do it without interrupting). Still, it surprised me, that someone would choose to do so with this particular work. To me, this was – well, not quite the easiest music to listen and enjoy, but definitely not one that takes a real effort (like John Cage). You get a theme nicely and clearly presented at the beginning of every fugue and then you can follow it around all its twists and turns, like a guided tour.

Things I bought in Japan: beautiful bowls.

I have a bit of a weakness for beautiful bowls. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I collect them, but I occasionally buy some. Especially if they are green. (One of my favourites is the one that broke and managed to mend so well that I’m still using it a decade later.) Whenever I randomly browse the shelves at a thrift shop, I look for (i) wool clothes, (ii) cool fabric scraps, and (iii) interesting small bowls before anything else. I have a tiny souvenir bowl from Venice (from my first visit there in the early 2000s) and an olive wood bowl that I know I also got on a trip but now can’t remember which one.

Ceramics were on my shopping list for the Japan trip, and Ingrid and I visited several ceramics shops.

The ones that kept catching my eye were the simplest, cheapest, most rustic ones. Very convenient to have a cheap taste! I came home with one platter and three small bowls, about the size of my palm. The platter matches one of the bowls, and although the three bowls don’t match each other, they have some kind of kinship, still. Maybe they were made at the same workshop? I didn’t check.

The platter will mostly come out as a serving dish for fancier meals, but the bowls are perfect for everyday use: for storing half a lemon, or serving a handful of cherry tomatoes.

The temperatures seem to be staying solidly above freezing even at night. Time for spring flowers.

Ranunculus in a hanging basket in the front porch, so we can see it whenever we come and go. And a fluffy heather in the large pot at the bottom of the stairs.

I’m not sure what those steel-wire baskets are supposed to be lined with. I’m guessing the producers had something more aesthetically pleasing in mind than cut-up paper bags. But… the bag kind of doesn’t look too bad.

I put pansies around both of those “centerpieces” just to fill out the pots. Not the ideal plant for this neighbourhood – the deer will come and nibble at the flowers, I’m sure – but the plant nursery didn’t have anything else to choose from, this early in the season.

Oh. That went faster than expected. Eight hours later, the deer have already been at them. Not just nibbled at the flowers but yanked out the entire plants. Couldn’t they just bite off the bits they want and leave the rest? And what did the poor heather bush do, why did it deserve to be thrown to the side?

The tulips at least are well protected from the deer, up at the top of the porch. I was worried about them during the coldest days of February, but the green shoots all survived.

The embroidery club is planning for an exhibition, and we were encouraged to make name signs as part of preparing for it.

Sweden (and maybe some of the other Nordic countries) has a concept of studieförbund which are a kind of national umbrella organizations for study circles and educational groups. There are eight of them according to Wikipedia. Many were established over a century ago as a means to educate those who didn’t have access to higher education. These days they organize classes and workshops mostly in the domains of arts, crafts, humanities and social sciences.

In addition to “top-down” courses they also provide support for self-organizing study groups such as our embroidery club. We get access to rooms, including a kitchen and toilets, for no charge. We are also invited to participate in the parent organization’s events, and the exhibition is one of them. Within the framework of Stockholm Culture Night, Sensus Studieförbund will hold workshops, exhibitions and other activities. We and two other similar embroidery clubs were invited to arrange a small one-room exhibition and a workshop on the theme of “free embroidery” – to inspire more people to start embroidering.

The name signs aren’t going to be the focus of the exhibition (that will just be whatever past works everyone decides to bring) but just a fun way to make it more personal for the visitors.

I unravelled the bottom half of the first sleeve and re-did it with decreases. Now I’m on the second sleeve, and I made good progress during today’s knitting club session. Plus I’ve found a good method to pack it in a project bag so that I can work on it without taking it – and its five balls of yarn – out of the bag at all, so I can bring it with me to work etc.

I’m enjoying knitting this, but I’m still not sure if I’ll actually like wearing it. Maybe? Hopefully?

One of the two potted cyclamens is thriving like never before. The other is looking less lively every week. They get the same amount of light (obviously) and water and plant food. The only difference apart from the species/variety/whatever is that the one on the right occasionally gets sprayed with a diluted soap and alcohol solution because of pesky little flies. Now I’m wondering if perhaps the spraying is what’s making it grow so lush. If I start spraying the other one, even though it has no visible fly problem, will it also perk up?

The plastic cover on the driver’s side mirror on my car fell off at some point. It’s done that before, and then Eric found a replacement – for a juicy 900 SEK. Now that replacement has fallen off again and gotten lost, without me even noticing it happening.

When I had the car serviced, the mechanic wasn’t too worried about the mirror being all open to the elements, but it seems like a good idea to keep water and ice (and gravel and dust and whatnot) out of it as much as possible.

This weekend I DIY’d my own side mirror cover out of a plastic folder that I cut to shape and fit into the grooves of the mirror, and then fastened and covered with duct tape. Not entirely watertight, of course, but it seems solid.

Do I feel silly driving around with a duct-taped mirror? Yes. Is it worth 900 SEK for me to have a car that looks whole? Nope.

Ingrid is off to Boden, in the far north of Sweden, for fifteen months of military service.

Her position will be gruppchef stridsfordon and I have no idea what the correct English translation is, but it means that she will be leading a small group of soldiers in IFVs, infantry fighting vehicles. The first three months are “just” basic training; the group leader thing will come after.

She’s been looking forward to this for a long time, and working out to be in the best shape she can, but the nerves have been gaining the upper hand in the last week. Now it’s finally happening – a night train to Boden, and tomorrow morning she’ll be presenting herself at the garrison in Boden.

We probably won’t be hearing much from her in the near future, but she will be coming home for a few days already the weekend after next.

I’m having a baking weekend. The freezer was empty, the cake tin was empty – this could not continue.

The plan was to make brownies, oat cakes, and poppy seed buns. Adrian got there first with the brownie, though, so I just had the cakes and buns left for this weekend.

These Estonian oat cakes are based on a childhood recipe. They’re mostly rolled oats and butter, with just enough egg to hold them together, and a bit of sugar. Most people who eat them say they’re less sweet than expected, and that just means you can eat more of them. And chopped candied orange peel.

The traditional recipe I’ve held on to for many years doesn’t work in its original state any more. Standard-sized eggs have become so much larger that if I follow the old recipe, the cakes spread out when baked. They’re supposed to stay in little mounds, softening only just a tiny bit around the edges. I have no memory of how large eggs used to be in Estonia thirty-five years ago, but it seems that they must have been about 2/3 of today’s Swedish eggs. Right now with the eggs I get at the supermarket, using two eggs instead of three makes the cakes turn out exactly right.

The poppy seed buns came out great as well.

About a week after the snow disappeared.