This is what happens to gingerbread cookies in a household full of people who like order. They get sorted by shape, and stacked. Small hearts, large hearts, left-facing pigs, right-facing pigs, and numerous piles of small stars and circles made from the scraps of dough between the larger cookies.

This looked satisfying but later turned out to be not a very good idea. At least not when the cookies are stacked when they are still warm. Because this way the steam can’t evaporate and the cookies end up soft rather than crisp. Unfortunately we only discovered this when we had finished decorating. I put the undecorated ones back in the oven to dry them out, but you can’t heat the decorated ones because the icing goes all runny. So we will be eating soft gingerbread cookies this year.

Ingrid is a skilled decorator and makes the most fancy ones, like the Christmas trees here. Adrian likes lots of icing on his, and preferably in colour, not in white.

I like understated decorations, mostly in white.

One Christmas we got a truck-shaped cookie cutter from Mathem (the online grocery store). I guess we are valued customers or something. It’s one of Adrian’s favourites, and Ingrid made an actual Mathem truck cookie for him.

This is Adrian’s photo of the cookies he liked best: a Santa couple, a very Grinchy Grinch, and a donut with extra everything.

We made gingerbread cookies. Ingrid joined us for a while but not long enough for me to catch her in photos.

The dough was softer and stickier than usual so we had trouble getting the cookies off the table and onto the baking sheets. And the first batch got slightly burned. But once we had kneaded in more flour into the dough and adjusted the oven, the rest came out delicious.

I prefer the traditional shapes – the hearts, Christmas trees, and stars. They’re mostly convex, easy to handle, and are well suited for decorating.

It’s December and Advent of Code is on again. I begin my days by sitting in the sofa, feet up, solving the day’s puzzles. One advent calendar in the computer, another in the background…

In the past I’ve used AoC to experiment with new languages like Python and F#. Now I have enough to do at work so I keep it simple and stick to C# which is the language I am most productive in.

There’s a competition element to it, but I ignore that. Not getting up at six in the morning; not rushing through the puzzles. I’m just happy to take part.

There was a full-on crisis at work today, which I spent all day resolving. Once the crisis was over my brain was mush and I felt too dull to do anything. I’m borrowing this photo from an earlier day, and posting this two days later.

This is the second oven mitt I’ve patched in exactly the same spot: the tip of the thumb. I’m pretty sure that the wear here is due to the thumb getting into food. Maybe someone lifts a heavy, full baking pan with lasagna out of the oven and the thumb of the mitt gets a bit of sauce on it. That spot of food goes unnoticed and unwashed, and somehow it weakens the fabric. As we keep using the mitt the fabric in that spot gets exposed to heat and a hole is burned in the dirty spot. But only there, and not in the parts that are most exposed to heat. There’s some chemistry behind this, I’m sure.

Here are the finished 1337-themed woollen socks in all their glory. I hope my colleague likes them.

The yarn is Novita’s “7 brothers”, so I used Novita’s “basic wool socks” pattern which is made for this yarn. (The pattern only has sizes 30, 38 and 46 though, so I had to make up my own variation for size 42-43. Luckily 42 is right in the middle between 38 and 46.)

I first tried knitting the logo but it was fiddly and the result didn’t look good, so I ripped that up and knitted plain socks and embroidered the logo afterwards. It came out much better this way – nice and even with no puckering, and only very slightly stiff. And as a bonus I learned the Estonian term for “duplicate stitch”.

The cuff has a hidden “1337” in it as well. One row of blue, three rows of blue, three again, and then seven.

The advent calendar is up.

This year it is fully activity-based. I’ve gradually been moving in this direction over the last few years anyway: the kids need no toys or other stuff, not even socks or underwear. Not even pencils or little funny erasers or hair bands. And not even chocolates or raisins or other small snacks, because Ingrid already took matters in her own hands and bought chocolate calendars for both herself and Adrian. (An Oreo calendar for her, a Lindt milk chocolate calendar for him.) I think they’re close to outgrowing this thing, but Adrian was still looking forward to it, so here it is.

There is no point in trying to turn baking lussebullar or gingerbread cookies into a calendar activity – that kind of thing needs to be planned together with the whole family. The calendar activities are all small-scale and low-stakes. Take a Christmas photo of yourself. Discuss: what if superheroes had to do Santa’s job. Look at photos from past Christmases.

The little letters on the rolled-up activity cards help me keep track which one is which, in case some activity still ends up on an unsuitable day.

Today’s workout was 40 minutes with dumbbells in the company of Coach Kozak and Claudia over at HASfit.com which is now my go-to place for workout videos.

This is the last day of the tretton37 workout challenge. It’s worked wonders for me. I spent October in a funk and barely exercised at all towards the end of the month. Now I have settled into a stable workout routine that has me doing some kind of exercise every single day. I have more energy and feel better in many ways.

I’m glad we had the challenge, but I’m also glad it is over. The app for reporting the daily workouts was effectively a social media platform and came with all the costs and benefits of such things. Benefits of course include other peoples’ inspirational photos, comments and thumbs-ups. Among the costs: having to put up with other people’s photos fom gyms and padel halls. Apparently some of them still think it is OK to go to the gym or even meet up with colleagues for lunchtime padel sessions – and that this is even something to proudly show off. (For the record: gyms are explicitly mentioned as places to avoid in Stockholm’s local covid-19 restrictions, and Stockholm’s municipal gyms and swimming halls have all been closed. But there is no law that would allow the government to close down private businesses at this time so commercial gyms are still open.) Mind-boggling and really annoying. I’m glad to not have to see any more of that.

I’ll keep the habit but stop the daily posting both here and in the app.

November has been dark and dreary, but I held out. Sometimes I hew to tradition. No Christmas lights or decorations, no gingerbread, no lussebullar before advent. Now, though, advent is here and we can finally put up advent lights everywhere, indoors and outdoors.

These coloured, patterned ones are my favourites.

The cloud of spangles in the background is a string of outdoor lights that we hang on our thuja tree. The first time we did it, Eric could reach nearly all the way to the top and the lights covered most of the tree. Now more than ten years later the tree is twice as tall and the lights are like a little apron on the tree.

I went out for a half-hour walk to check today’s workout box. Adrian, who hadn’t been out all day, came with me. But he is not very fond of walking so he took his bike. My walking turned into running to more or less keep up with him. He rather enjoyed that, especially when I really wasn’t able to catch up with him, so he added some extra detours for us, preferably hilly ones. Before I knew it my half-hour walk had turned into 50 minutes of jogging up and down hills. I don’t normally enjoy running but this was actually fun.

We may not get a proper Christmas celebration this year but we can at least enjoy making lussebullar.