Ingrid and I went to the movies and then for a sushi lunch afterwards. We also bought a saucepan for 30 kr at the flea market on Hötorget and browsed fun shops like Sostrene Grene, and Sudd & Kludd.

We saw Flow, the animated movie about the cat in the flood. It was the first time for Ingrid and the second time for me – I saw it in January, catching it just as it looked like it was ending its run in the cinemas, and liked it enough to be happy to watch it again.

I liked how the animals in the movie are very clearly still animals, even though they’re more intelligent than normal animals – unlike many children’s movies where animals are just humans in other shapes. The dogs here can’t help chasing things, the cat is mesmerised by things swinging back and forth in front of it. The cat makes small meep sounds when distressed, even when nobody is nearby, just like real cats do.

The animals are intelligent enough to understand each other somewhat, even though they don’t have language. I also understand them somewhat, but mostly not all the way. It’s difficult to interpret an unfamiliar animal’s body language. What does the capybara actually think is going on? No idea. Are the other dogs bullies or just clueless? Don’t know. Why are the birds so bothered by one of them helping the cat? Who knows.

A lot of stuff has clearly happened in the world where the story takes place. I wonder how much of an actual back story there is in the creators’ heads, and how much of the world-building is hand-wavy “it just is that way”.

The cat in Flow looks quite similar to Nysse so I couldn’t help imagining Nysse in all those distressing situations. It was a bit like watching movies where kids get hurt, but not quite as bad. (I really struggle with that since having children.) Worse the first time; now at least I knew that it wouldn’t get hurt for real.

Sushi, by the way, is horrendously expensive these days. As is all eating out, really. I thought it was bad when a sushi lunch went up to 130 kr a couple of years ago. Now we’re at 160 for lunch and 200 kr for a la carte. My salary has not gone up 50% in the same time period.

The internet informed me that you could “fry” eggs in heavy cream. I like eggs and I like cream, so I tried it out.

Really it’s not so much frying as cooking, perhaps even caramelizing. The cream and eggs go in a cold pan and then you heat them together, until most of the water in the cream has evaporated and the eggs are done – which, fortuitously, happens at roughly the same time.

The first bite tasted just like normal fried eggs. That’s because it was just the eggs. The second bite had a fair bit of the reduced, caramelized cream, and was delicious.

Normally, frying is not my favourite way of preparing eggs. When I do fry eggs, it’s either because I’m in a hurry, or because the dish calls for them (for, say, pytt i panna/potato hash). I prefer my eggs on the creamier side, and the crisp underside of fried eggs is OK but not my favourite. This cream-cooking process is slower, so there’s less crisp, and at the same time the cream makes the temperature more self-regulating so I don’t have to watch it all the time. I think I like it.

March weather continues to be its disappointing self, with cloudy skies and near-zero temperatures, and actual spring nowhere in sight. Every year I remind myself that March is not actually spring, and every year I let myself get tricked by those first few warm days into believing that this year is different.

No, it’s not.

Here’s a photo of hellebores from a week ago. What’s out there right now does not deserve to be photographed.

I forgot my glasses at home today. It wasn’t too bad at work – I can see the monitor well enough, it’s just a bit tiring. What was unfortunate was that this happened on an embroidery club day, and I’m in the middle of a section of dark grey thread on dark grey fabric, which is rather hard to work on when you can’t see it well.

One of the other ladies there had an extra pair that I could borrow. I was most sceptical, because they were more than twice as strong as my own reading glasses. I tried them out anyway, and it was like wearing a pair of magnifying glasses – as long as I held the embroidery work at exactly the right distance. They were totally useless for seeing anything else, especially the rest of the room. But with their slim design, I could push them down on my nose, grandma style, and look over them for everything else.

Maybe I should buy extra strong embroidery glasses for myself as well. Or maybe I should get an actual eye exam done and not just buy off-the-shelf glasses that seem good enough. On the other hand, I have a whole list of things to buy that seem more urgent than slightly better glasses, so maybe not.

I am trying out a pattern for felted double slippers. You knit two conjoined slippers, which results in a shape that initially makes no sense and couldn’t possibly be anything, and then you turn half of it inside out, inside the other half, and boom, an actual slipper.

They look huge, which is as it should be, because the next step will be to felt them by machine washing them using a non-wool programme. That will be interesting. I’m using the exact yarn that the pattern recommended, but even with larger needles than they suggested, mine came out a few centimetres smaller than they should. I hope that they will nevertheless shrink to a suitable size when felted.

The socks I knit are all anatomically shaped and asymmetric, and I saw no reason to do anything differently with the slippers. Why would I want a rounded toe when my feet are not rounded? I’m not a cat. The shape is not too different from the original so it will hopefully felt equally well.

I’m curious why the pattern makes the two halves of each slipper exactly the same size. If you want one half to fit well inside the other, shouldn’t it then be slightly smaller? Maybe they wanted to keep the pattern as simple as possible.

I’ve been putting off the actual felting, always with some excuse. The electricity price is too high. I don’t have time today to invest several hours in this. But really I believe I’m a bit nervous about the felting not turning out well and then this will all feel like a lot of wasted work.

We had a board game night with the team at Sortera. I was going to take photos of us playing, but forgot. Then I was going to take photos of us at dinner, but forgot. Too busy enjoying it.

We used to play a lot at home, but nowadays Ingrid and Adrian tend to be busy with their friends, and board games with me isn’t a priority. Tretton37 also had board game nights, but that and all other social events fell by the wayside long before the company went under. I’ve been missing board games – it was great to play again.

Dream On is a great warm-up game; everyone I’ve played it with has enjoyed it. The first round is always chaos, people throwing down random cards and then realizing the error of their ways in phase two. The same happened today – we got twice as many points in round two as in round one.

Mysterium is another perennial favourite. Such a well-designed game, and the vision cards always amaze me with their many layers of potential interpretation.

All the spring feeling we had this weekend is gone. We’re back to a few degrees above freezing, and the constant cloudy sky. Still, it’s not freezing, and it’s not raining, and there is daylight, so I have no good excuses for not cycling.

I need two clothes rails for my IKEA PAX wardrobes. They’ve been general storage closets for many years, but now I want to get rid of the large free-standing wardrobe in the middle of my bedroom and move all my clothes into the built-in wardrobes.

Choose a standard product from IKEA and you’ll have no trouble getting spare parts and replacements later, right? PAX wardrobes have existed for decades and they’re still there. But for some reason IKEA decided to abandon the standard 60 cm width at some point and left me somewhat stranded after all.

At least the fixtures and fittings and the holes for them are all still the same. I bought two clothes rails meant for the 75 cm wardrobe, and hopefully I can adapt them to the narrower width. Sawing off the rail is not too tricky, just tedious and noisy, but then there’s a small hole on one side of the rail that needs to fit a pin in the fastening mechanism, and that might be more challenging. I’m not there yet, though – first I need to borrow a drill somewhere.

I grew up with no particular skills in the DIY department. Wood shop and metalworking was for boys only, in 1980s Estonia. Girls got sewing, knitting and cooking classes instead. I can assemble furniture and re-upholster chairs, and maybe hack together some simple bookends or tool storage. But I don’t really know what I’m doing.

What’s the difference between all the wood saws in my basement? How do I make sure the holes I drill are straight? How do I get precision in my cuts and angles? Should I screw or glue? What kind of file do I want for this? Can I use this screw in this type of wall?

It’s been easy to leave most of the DIY work to Eric all these years – but it feels good to be forced out of my comfort zone now.

First thing in the morning: IKEA, to start looking for a new bed, and to buy clothes rails for my built-in closets. Visiting IKEA on a Saturday can be a nightmare, but not if you’re there right when they open. Plenty of space in the parking lot, and no crowds inside, either. By the time I was ready to leave, the situation in the parking lot was rather different, with cars hunting for free spots.

Next up: a trip to the city to buy embroidery yarn, which was also this season’s inaugural bicycle trip. My 30-day travel card ran out yesterday, and today was a bright, sunny day, which seemed like a clear sign that it was time to dust off the bike, pump up the tires, and start pedalling.

The sun is warm, but the air isn’t. And at this time of the year the sun still doesn’t reach very high in the sky. Even at two o’clock in the afternoon, long sections of the cycle lanes from here to the city are in full shade from the houses that line them.

In the evening: party. Eric, Ingrid and Adrian had a housewarming party at their new apartment. They’ve got all the essential furniture in place and have settled in. The living room sofa is large enough to fit Adrian’s entire band of friends at the same time!

And then later in the evening, Melodifestivalen with Ingrid, while Adrian was watching it with his friends at the apartment – we preferred a quieter evening. Much of the music is pretty boring – artists trying to repeat their wins by replicating previous hits – but the winning song, a catchy and humorous Swedish-Finnish song about saunas, was actually fun.

Exhaustion and bedtime after that.

The dogma prompt: Black fabric. Fabric paint in the colour you used last week (which for me was orange). Make circles. Make straight stitches across the circles in black, and straight stitches between the circles in a colour matching the circles.

The only black fabric I found in my stash was a thin, slinky polyester thing. No stability to it whatsoever, and fraying so badly around the edges that I was afraid it would disintegrate in my hands.

I had no orange fabric paint, but I found a red (that was very dried out) and a gold (that was still liquid) so go for gold.

Those long, straight stitches that the prompt asked for, combined with the floppy fabric, produced the least durable piece of embroidery I’ve ever made. Don’t touch any of the stitches, or they will deform.

I keep saying it because I keep feeling it: I really like this kind of playful, no-commitment, low-stakes embroidery. Do something, try something new, and it doesn’t matter if it comes to nothing. Except it will probably never come to actual nothing: I’m getting so many ideas from each of these. I don’t like the look of the golden stitches between the circles (if this was an actual project, I’d rip them out) but the rest of it? Yes please. (Imagining a black blouse or top with some golden circles artfully fake-randomly sprinkled out, black stitching across the circles.)