It’s Shrove Tuesday, which in Sweden means eating a semla.

Ten-ish years ago, bakeries started offering semla-inspired products, and the creativity has only grown since then. This year Spånga Konditori offers not just traditional semla and a lactose-free one, but also vanilla semla (which vanilla custard instead of almond paste), cinnamon bun semla (also with custard) and wiener-semla (in a croissant, with the almond paste mixed up with the whipped cream).

I went for the traditional option. Ingrid and Adrian wanted to try the cinnamon bun and croissant variations. We concluded that a plain cinnamon bun is better than the cinnamon bun semla, and that if you want to add anything to a croissant then chocolate works better than almond cream.

Was going to sole the slippers but didn’t get very far. Made a template, cut out two pieces of leather, but couldn’t find the energy to actually sew them on.

I brought a cold with me from Japan. Runny nose, ticklish throat, tiny bit of a fever, no energy. All I want to do is laze around and do nothing. Preferably even less.

Some of our water pipes froze overnight. Not for the first time. The last time was no more than 5 years ago, and somehow I still forgot that this can happen, and didn’t turn on the heating coils ahead of the cold snap. (–17°C this morning.)

I started the dishwasher before I went to bed, and by morning – no more than eight hours later – the cold water pipe in the kitchen had frozen. The pipe to the shower was not entirely frozen, but only a tiny trickle of water was coming through.

Went to the basement, plugged in the cord for the heating coils. Turned on the tap in the kitchen partway, and same with the shower. Waited. Waited another day. I was getting to the point of looking up the prices of heat blowers and resigning myself to the need of buying one (I know we had one in 2018 but have no idea where it is now) when the shower came back online. Three hours later, the water in the kitchen was back on as well.

I thought I had opened the shower just a little bit, but I forgot to take into account just how light the shower head is. Even that gentle flow of water was enough to throw the shower head around so it ended up showering half the bathroom. I was in a Teams meeting with work when it happened; had to rush to turn off the camera and run to the bathroom to turn the water off.

The felted slippers have turned out to be far from hard-wearing. Holes in the soles again. I only just mended them six weeks ago, and three of the past weeks I haven’t even been here to wear them. I’ve needle-felted more wool over the holes and near-holes for now, but this is clearly not sustainable.

A hit of the felted wool shows on the inside of the slippers. Which is logical but still somehow fascinating. The felting needle really pushes the fibres all the way into the existing material and some of it all the way through.

I’ll be wearing these for a day or two just to get the patched bits properly evened out, but after that, I’ll see if I can add proper soles.

We ate a lot of good food in Japan. Still, by the end of the trip I had had rather enough of it and was really looking forward to proper food. Especially proper bread – crusty and chewy and flavourful, not the bland stuff that the Japanese seem to prefer.

Their bread was white, very soft, very airy, bland, and often sweet. The sandwiches all had the crusts cut off, and the golden surface on the buns could not be called crust, either, as soft as it was. It was like eating baby food.

Today’s meals:
– Breakfast: porridge
– Lunch: sourdough bread
– Dinner: barley stew

I am back after spending fifteen wonderful days in Japan with Ingrid. Now I am all jetlagged and emotionally hung over and have 1200 photos to process (and more still uploading from my phone) and the house desperately needs a deep clean and I don’t even know how to catch up with all of that. One small step at a time, I guess.

I managed to stay awake until 9 yesterday evening (which is 5 in the morning Japanese time) and mostly sleep until 4:30 this morning – long enough that it counts as morning and not night. Good first step.

Coming home from a long trip to somewhere really different always leaves me in a strange emotional state. It is absolutely nice to be home, sleep in my own bed, eat my own food, cuddle with my cat. But it’s jarring to leave behind the intense, packed days, full of new experiences and people and places and no everyday duties. I feel displaced and empty.

For the blog catch-up, there will be a new category for all the Japan photos and posts. I will be filling it up gradually so you can check back whenever you want, and let you know when I’m all done with it so you can get it all in one go if you prefer.