I bought scraps of a nice wool fabric a while ago, with the plan of turning them into a skirt. Decent-sized pieces that had been pinned in the shape of a ladies’ suit on a shop window mannequin. I was picturing a scrappy, patchwork-y skirt, pieced together from differently shaped parts.

I quickly realized I’d need to bind all the edges, or the fabric would fray with all the handling. I struggled to find a bias tape that would work with the fabric – the tapes I looked at were too red, or too purple, or too muddy brown. Then I found this linen bias tape which I thought looked decent. But now I think it was a mistake – it’s too bright and sticks out too much. Should have gone with one of the darker colours after all.

Next problem – the bound edges were all stiff, which I hadn’t expected. When I started assembling the pieces, the fabric didn’t drape any more but sort of stood stiffly.

And the pieces I cut weren’t any good, either. I didn’t achieve a patchwork-y look at all. I didn’t want to bind and sew too much, and didn’t want to waste fabric, either, because I didn’t have very much of it. So I made the pieces quite large. Put together, they just looked boring.

At this point I can’t see any way of rescuing this and making anything I’d actually want to wear from what I have in front of me, short of undoing absolutely everything and starting all over. And even then I’m not sure I could fix all the problems. This is no fun at all any longer, and while I don’t like throwing away things that could be something, I’m not going to force myself to work on something I won’t enjoy. This goes into the recycling bag.

Ballet evening at the Royal Opera.

Lukáš Timulak, Totality in Parts. Had all the right pieces but left me cold. During the intermission I was doubting myself, trying to figure out whether I just wasn’t in the right mindset for modern dance today, or maybe I was too tired from work to appreciate it properly.

It was just… boring. There is the “individual vs. group” angle, dancers moving as a group and then breaking out of it, but there really isn’t anything new about that. And I didn’t like the “language” it uses – and it’s definitely not just this work, it seems to be a certain style of dance that some choreographers prefer – that is all slouchy and dragging and “drawly”. I think of it as the “bad posture” school. The body seems to hang and be dragged along, rather than moving with energy. Pelvis forward, sternum back; leading with the elbow and letting the arm hang; toes turned inwards; shoulders rounded. A similar style is present in fashion photography as well, with a kind of world-weary, blasé, slouchy look.

The only thing I will really remember from Totality in Parts is the decoration on the far wall, with 512 lights arranged in a spiralling circle, pulsating and fading.

Then came Emma Portner’s “Bathtub ballet”, and all my doubts left me. Nothing wrong with my head; I just needed a better show to look at. Twenty-five bathtubs lined up on the stage, and seven dancers doing everything possible with them. It sounds gimmicky, and it almost could have been – “look, here’s yet another thing I can do with a bathtub!” – but somehow it wasn’t. There was an energy and a curiosity here that was just totally engaging.

And there is SO MUCH a bathtub can be used for. You can be in it alone, or together with someone. Bring water, or soap lather, or a duck. Lie, sit, stand, balance on the edge, arch across it. Hide in it, and reduce your body to a pair of legs, just a graphical combination of two articulated lines, really, paring off everything else. Stand it on end. Remove its bottom so you can pour yourself through it.

(c) Nils Emil Nylander

Aftonbladet’s review finds Portner’s piece meaningless and banal, an agglomeration of loose ideas, a technical exploration without meaning. Whereas Timulak’s piece is existential.

Expressen likewise appreciates the existential message of Totality in Parts, its expression of the loneliness of each individual dancer, a reminder that we are small atoms in a wide universe. Whereas the 45 minutes of Bathtub Ballet is too long for a single idea.

Dagens Nyheter likewise uses words such as “weighty”, “mystical” and “powerful” to describe Totality in Parts, but finds the bathtub idea too artificial, sees it as an unnecessary obstacle to movement rather than an interesting exploration.

What can I say. I disagree with them all. I’m not looking for a deeper message in every single ballet; they don’t all need to tell a story or impart commentary on the human condition and our existence. I just want the performance to be interesting. Bathtub Ballet does interesting things with the scene as a whole, and the enclosed space within each tub, and parts of the human body.

Last time I took a Friday off to go to the crafts fair. This time I couldn’t swing that, so I had to go on the weekend. Was expecting it to be super crowded (the way it definitely has been sometimes in the past) but it wasn’t too bad at all.

Bought yarn, and more yarn, and fabric, and more fabric. Was glad to see that Apmezga was there again. (I bought the yarn for my green top from them.) They might just be my favourite yarn dyer and seller right now. There are many indie dyers who sell hand-dyed yarn, but many tend towards candy colours, some even adding glitter. Apmezga’s deep jewel tones are much more to my taste.

The weather keeps teetering back and forth between winter and not winter. We get snow, and then it melts away again. Today is one of the sunny, melty days. Makes it feel like spring, and I have to remind myself that we’ll probably have another month of this before it’ll be spring for real.

The temperature has been hovering around zero. Most north-south streets are clear already. But the ones running east-west are still icy.

In our office, six floors up, looking outside, it felt like we were in the clouds. Fog below us, fog above us.

In the street it almost also felt like being in a cloud.

I almost got a photo of Nysse sleeping on top of Eric’s computer bag, which I believe is the least comfortable thing I’ve ever seen him sleep on. (Disregarding those that seem uncomfortable only because they are hard, but since he weighs so little, they probably don’t feel very hard to him.) But he woke up just as I was adjusting the white balance.

It’s Shrove Tuesday, which means semlor. I’d forgotten all about it, until Ingrid reminded me. Had I remembered earlier, I would not have timed my visit to the bakery to coincide with all the commuters coming home. Still, the queue was only half this long when I joined it. It grew with every arriving train.

Eric got a whole semla, while Ingrid and I shared one. It was more of a symbolic thing, really. I mean, they do taste good, but it’s not like they’re my favourite baked goods. And they’re usually huge anyway. Adrian meanwhile wasn’t interested at all.

Ingrid showed me this jar of “pre-workout supplement” that she bought as a birthday present for a friend of hers. I don’t even know how to react. To my gen X eyes, it doesn’t look workout-related at all. If I had to guess, I’d guess candy, or perhaps some gag product for Halloween – like, open the jar and it will scream at you. I would expect whatever is inside to be a mixture of lurid pink and poison green. Brilliant marketing in its own way, though, because it’s definitely memorable.

Annual General Meeting of Spånga Scout Club. Barely anyone outside the board and other people in administrative posts turned up. Possibly because the meeting invite said it would take three hours. Which it luckily didn’t.