I had a mammography appointment today at Capio St. Göran’s Hospital.

Getting there was a bit of a hassle. The letter I got about my appointment had big bold text about a new location, so I was expecting some confusion. Unfortunately I didn’t think to bring the letter with me. When I arrived I saw plenty of signage on the hospital grounds, all leading me to the mammography department, so it all seemed simple enough. But when I got there, at the far end of the grounds, it turned out that there were now two mammography departments, only one of which had any signs at all. The one I had arrived at just told me to go all the way back to the entrance. You’d think they’d at least have signs for, like, “Mammography A” and “Mammography B” instead of just completely ignoring one of them, but no.

The appointment itself was very quick and efficient, if uncomfortable. There is nothing pleasant about getting your boobs squeezed hard between two unyielding plates of plastic.

St. Göran’s hospital looks old on the outside, but inside it’s all wide, gleaming corridors. I still have strong memories of the facilities at the Royal London Hospital – badly lit, cramped and dingy. I always felt a bit uneasy there.

Life is gray and muddy and miserable, and Russia has started an actual war. It’s horrible to even think that this can happen – in 2022, in the middle of Europe, people are being woken by air raid sirens. And while there may be condemnations and economic sanctions, there will be no real military help to Ukraine, and Putin’s bullying will get him what he wants. Again. I’m glad that Estonia managed to join NATO before Russia became strong enough again to block other countries’ ambitions to do the same.

Is this what the beginning of WW2 felt like? Horrifying, but at a distance, and with a side of helplessness?

Now I’m off to comfort myself with pancakes for dinner.

Office day today. View from the roof terrace outside the Urb-it Stockholm office.

The weather has been unpleasant, and what it’s left behind on the ground even more so – a crust of ice, and on top of that a thick layer of wet snow that is already melting a bit.

Nysse hasn’t been out much in the past few days. He really doesn’t like walking through wet snow. When he walks, he shakes off each paw he lifts, with a mien of disgust.

He needs to get out, though. I can see him getting restless. So, like the five-star cat servant that I am, I took him and went out with him and made tracks for him. It worked like a treat – he walked in my footsteps, taking big steps to avoid the snow in between. Once he’d followed the tracks for a few metres, he realized that the outdoors was really quite interesting after all and went off on his own. (Off to eat crumbs underneath the neighbours’ bird feeder.)

A storm passed through today. Lots of wind, lots of snow/rain/sleet. Several times I thought that I should go take a photo. But there was always something to hold me back. “I just need to finish this thing for work first.” “After lunch.” “There’s a lull in the snowfall, this is boring.” “Now the light is fading.” And suddenly it’s evening and I have no photo. I don’t understand why I do this to myself.

My brother came to visit, for his birthday. We baked a lemon poppyseed cake and played Small World. It was a tight race for the top – Eric won, one point ahead of me and two points ahead of Adrian.

Nearly undisturbed snow early in the morning – or at least early for a Saturday – before cars and feet.

Sewed a grocery shopping bag to give away as a birthday present. It has a very subtle machine-embroidered letter “k” that I now see is nearly invisible in the photo, despite being quite large.

I expected this project to take about an hour, but it took almost exactly twice as long. I even did some estimating – and was still way off.

Measure, cut, sew edges, sew edges once more for an enclosed seam, pin top hem, sew top hem, measure handles, cut handles, sew handles, attach handles. 10 steps, say 5 minutes each, that’s 50 minutes, round up to an hour.

The zigzag embroidered letter was a last-minute afterthought, but that wasn’t the thing that made the whole project take so much longer than expected. No, it was totally ordinary work that I had simply not accounted for – some of which I might have expected if I had planned more carefully, and some that came out of nowhere.

Ironing the fabric (and setting up the ironing board, and waiting for the iron to heat up, etc etc). Piecing together one of the faces of the bag out of two separate pieces because the fabric scraps I had were too oddly shaped. Folding the top hem, twice, in a stiff fabric. Measuring for the placement of the handles. Fighting with the sewing machine when sewing over the place where the handles attach to the body of the bag and there are like seven layers of fabric to punch through. Refilling the bottom bobbin when it ran out of thread. Fighting with the machine again when it made crazy tangles after I replaced the bobbin, because the top thread had gotten out of one of the hooks it needs to run through, without me noticing.

Estimating is hard. It’s a good thing I was in no hurry. The birthday in question isn’t until Sunday – oodles of time left! – so this didn’t matter at all. And the end result looks pretty nice, even though it’s not very photogenic.

1 finished pair of socks: 48 grams.
Leftover yarn: 54 grams.
I can get a whole other pair of socks out of that, which is so much better than having yarn for almost-but-not-quite a pair and then having to make up the difference with something else.

I’m getting back in the habit of spending at least one day a week in an office, so that I can meet some people and have something happening around me.

After work I take the opportunity to run small errands. Spånga has absolutely nothing when it comes to stores, so anything I want to buy that I can’t get a supermarket, I either need to order online, or drive somewhere for. Driving to some mall just to get a packet of sewing machine needles feels absurd, and so does paying 49 kronor for postage. So these office days often solve several problems in one go. Today: sewing machine needles for stretchy fabrics, a pair of small scissors, but not the knitting needles I wanted.