I declared Christmas finished today. Packed away the decorations and took out the Christmas tree, washed and ironed the party tablecloths and napkins. By my estimations, I ironed roughly 8.5 square metres of linen tablecloth. That took a while.

A few snapshots from the Bergheden family Christmas party. Food (potluck style), conversations, and presents for the kids.

Revisiting stage 1 of Signature Trail Stockholm, roughly two years after the first time.

Same trail, same season, but different weather, and what a difference it makes. Last time was cloudy; today I had beautiful clear skies. There were rather more people around. Instead of a dreamlike atmosphere, it was bright and fresh.

Not that the sun was actually directly visible much of the time. It was there and it made a difference, but it was also mostly out of reach, even at high noon.

Last time was in February and the ice had settled on lake Mälaren. This time we’ve barely had any winter weather and the lake was mostly ice-free. At most there were thin slabs of ice in the most protected corner of the bay at Görväln.

An undulating layer of broken-up ice, like the skin of an ice dragon:

Lunch break at the same place as last year. I was hungry way before getting there but with the temperature being what it was, I really didn’t feel like sitting down in the shade somewhere. Knowing that, if nothing better came up, I’d have this spot at least, I kept going. The picnic table was perfectly positioned to get some sun on it. Nevertheless I ate as quickly as I could because it felt like my fingers were going to turn into icicles, despite thick gloves. Mittens are the only thing that really keep my hands warm but eating with them on is inconvenient.

The golf course towards the end of the trail was, like the rest of the trail, the same but not the same. Last year it was desolate in mist. This year – full of tobogganing kids and skiing adults.

Ingrid has been working extra at Spånga Konditori, a local café, since the start of this school year. Manning the till, serving cakes, brewing coffee, selling bread, etc etc. She’s been bringing home all sorts of goodies – from rescued day-old leftover bread that would otherwise go in the bin (my colleagues have gotten so much sourdough bread from that place!) to super-fancy pastries that she can buy at a nice employee discount.

I’ve been wanting to stop by to visit her and take some photos, which sounds uncomplicated, but the tricky part is doing it without disrupting her work. She mostly works weekends, for a number of obvious reasons, and weekends at the café are busy. They’re not quite understaffed, but they’re also not not understaffed. Now during the Christmas break, she was available for work on a Friday, and I got my chance.

Looking super professional!

Eric is moving over his stuff to his new apartment, and odd gaps are appearing in the furnishings here. (The half-empty bookshelves looked particularly sad, until we moved the empty shelves as well, and consolidated what was left into a smaller space.) Now it was time for the houseplants. Many of them were more his “babies” than mine, so it made sense for him to take them with him. And overall he’s leaving so much more than he’s taking, so anything he is even remotely interested in, I’m happy to let him have.

(I know I have photos of what this space usually look like, but no idea how to find them.)

I took a trip to IKEA for some completely unrelated things, but realized that they have a decent houseplant department, and for the usual great IKEA prices. Nothing fancy, but that’s exactly what I wanted.

I made the brandy sauce for the Christmas pudding based on BBC Food’s recipe and it’s almost like a jelly in texture. I could probably cut it into shapes. You’d think the BBC would be a reliable source for a recipe like that! When my mum saw the sauce, she immediately guessed that it was the BBC recipe – “that’s the one with 55 grams of everything” – because she’s had the same experience. So it really is the recipe that’s strange, not me mis-measuring anything.

But if you can get past the odd looks, it’s rather practical. The sauce stays where you put it on the plate, and you can take precisely as much as you want.

A low-key New Year’s celebration, as usual. Salmon stew with cream and saffron for dinner. (With kohlrabi instead of fennel because, shockingly, the supermarket was all out of fresh fennel.) And an experimental dessert, which tasted absolutely delicious, even though parts of the recipe didn’t work out as expected. (ICA’s whipped panna cotta with marinated raspberries and an oat crunch.)

Ingrid went off after dinner to celebrate with her friends, and my mum also left before midnight in order to drive home safely before the promised snow storm. With just Eric, Adrian and myself, the mood wasn’t quite as celebratory. We watched Pulp Fiction – Adrian has been interested in older movies recently – and that was that.

The snow storm wasn’t too bad around midnight, but visibility was crap. We didn’t bother going up on the roof, which we normally do for the great views, because there wouldn’t be any views anyway. Instead we walked to a nearby football field, hoping that people around it might use it to fire off their fireworks. A few did. But a lot of the time we could hear the cracks and booms but not see anything through the snow and the low-hanging clouds. It was like there were invisible ghost fireworks all around us.

Guess what we had today? Sunlight! Clear skies from morning till evening.

I went for a long walk around northern Järvafältet, mostly following the Järvaleden trail. Säbysjön to Översjön to Fäboda to Väsby gård to Hägerstalund and back to Säbysjön. Four and a half hours with barely a pause (because it’s cold to sit still in this weather) so maybe 18 km?

The temperatures have been around zero for a while. The ground was frozen in the shadier places that the sun doesn’t reach at all, and a bit muddy in sunnier spots. Even then, it was mostly just a thin layer of mud at the top and decently firm, frozen ground beneath it. Which was good, because I went out in my barefoot shoes, which are barely more than socks with a rubber sole and definitely not waterproof. But I managed to keep my feet dry.

Some of the smaller streams and ponds were covered in a thin layer of ice, but overall this winter is not wintering.

Last year I could go out skiing on Järvafältet in December. I know I skied on the ice on lake Översjön. This year there’s no ice in sight.

The woods near Hägerstalund look less like they’d harbour elves this time of the year, but I could imagine trolls, or ogres, I guess.

I bought a new old sewing machine, but haven’t actually tried using it until now. Today Ingrid wanted to hem a pair of jeans, and I realized I didn’t even know how to thread the machine.

Just winging it based on past experience didn’t work. Compared to Eric’s old Bernina, nothing quite works the same. But – thank goodness for the Internet – I could buy a PDF scan of the original user’s manual for 75 SEK, and that finally got me sorted.

I got nice and tidy seams with ordinary sewing thread, but didn’t manage to get the tension right with a thicker polyester thread, no matter how I adjusted it. The top thread was always too loose. Turning the tension knob towards “looser” made it noticeably worse, but tightening did not make it better. Maybe it would work better with a thicker fabric to match the thick thread?

Anyway, getting a handle on the basics took me so long that Ingrid had already finished hand-seaming her jeans hems. I guess I’ll just stick to normal thread and normal fabric to begin with, and tackle this again later if a need arises.

Nysse, in a cherry tree, asserting his territory against a magpie.