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.

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?