Nyttårsforsetter

Must. Try. This. Which is to say "twined knitting" for making a non-rolling stockinette stitch edge. Fabulous.

Finished mom's sweater coat except for the buttons yesterday. I tried really hard to resist starting in on the fair isle yoke pullover, but of course I couldn't. I have about 23 cm (out of 47!) done on the first sleeve. The alpaca yarn is very thin and not knitting up very smoothly. Clearly a sweater that will need blocking. I'm guessing it will "bloom" when wet blocked, and am excited to see what happens.

I thought I wasn't going to do the 12 sweater challenge again this year, but who am I trying to kid? If I'm really honest, I've been planning to do it again this year too all along, so I might as well fess up. Here's the plan. The first few will be from stash only, and I don't need to buy any patterns either (all available for free on line):

1. Drops 108-10 Jumper in Alpaca: this is the fair isle yoke pullover I cast on for yesterday. (Raglan--half the yarn was recycled from a friend, half purchased by me)
2. Cheryl Niamath's Miss Honeychurch: I think I have just enough Drops Lin in blue in my stash to make this. (Raglan--yarn purchased by me last spring)
3. Debbie Bliss' Yoke Detail Sweater: after much hemming and hawing I keep coming back to this for the dark blue Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool that I bought in the fall of 2008. This is where the twined knitting edge above comes into play. (Raglan--yarn purchased "used" by me from a Raveler)
4. Drops 100-33 Textured knitted jersey: this will be with the remaining Highlander yarn that R gave me. I'll probably leave off the texture and perhaps add a turtleneck. (Raglan--yarn purchased by a friend and given to me)

As you can see, I have become a total convert to raglan shaping. Although I like seaming and am pretty good at it, I actually think raglans are more flattering on my figure. Dropped shoulders like you get with most traditional Norwegian sweaters make me look really bulky, and set-in sleeves tend to make my arms look like stuffed sausages. Raglans seem to smooth everything out.

After I get these four done with yarn I already have on hand, my original plan was a list of 6 really challenging sweaters that I've been wanting to work on for a long time, and I'll still probably do at least a couple of them. More and more, however, I have been thinking that what I really want to do is start recycling yarn. There's so much about that process that appeals to me. I want to reduce my consumption and save money. I love thrift store shopping, I love ripping out or deconstructing sweaters, and I think I will love the process of finding an appropriate project to go with the yarn that I'm able to recover. I'm not particularly squeamish, and am pretty good at washing and handling wool (and want to become better), so I definitely think I have the skills needed. I love the idea of finding a damaged or ugly sweater in a beautiful yarn and recycling it into something I can wear. There are two groups on Ravelry that focus on this (UnRavelers and Thrifty Knitters) that I've just joined, so I'm sure there will be lots to learn from them.

So I guess my New Year's Resolution is to dive into the world of recycling/upcycling/reclaiming yarn. I'm super excited about it!

Happy New Year!

ETA some links to pages explaining how to harvest yarn from garments:

Soulful Hues: a good basic tutorial with pictures, including the kind of seam to look for (but not the kind to avoid, namely serged).

Neauveau: another basic tutorial. It has a picture of a "bad"serged seam. I wouldn't suggest just unraveling the yarn into one huge pile like this blogger does, however. It's easy enough to wrap it into a center-pull ball as you go along.

My Virtual Sanity: this appears to be the cream of the crop for tutorials. Highly recommended! She goes through everything, and my only complaint is that she (like everyone else, apparently) writes "surged" instead of "serged." I think I'm just going to start writing "overlocked."

Peaceful Easy Knitting: this one is good because it explains how to figure out the yardage/meterage of the yarn once it's unraveled. I had been wondering about this. Extra bonus points: "serge" is spelled correctly.

I dvale

It's hard to imagine someone being lazier that I have been all Christmas. I feel like I'm hibernating. Since I made the whole dinner for Thanksgiving, KE made our entire Christmas Eve dinner, so I've barely even been cooking. I only made 3 kinds of cookies this year, though I may still get inspired and use up the rest of the cream I bought in something. We had a really nice evening together with KE's sister and nephew. The food was great (ribbe, home made surkål, home made medisterpølser, medisterkaker, poteter, rosenkål, tyttebær, juleøl, and just småkaker and fruit for dessert), and we had a fun time opening presents--especially E. It was fun to see him so into it this year, for really the first time. Here's our tree:

And here's my rather sorry attempt at making a felted ornament. The crocheted edging was going great until I got to to the other side of the heart, and then somehow, no matter what I did, it came out all wavy and awkward:

Oh well, half a heart is better than no heart. I still have enough of the felted knitting to make a couple more of them, should I get inspired. I really need to sit down and make a list of the Christmassy things I'd like to make or buy to have on hand for next year: we need a treeskirt, we need a tablecloth that fits our oddly shaped table, and I'd like to knit stockings for all three of us.

Yesterday we drove to Siggerud to visit one of KE's mother's sisters and her husband. We had a really nice visit, and we found out a bit more about KE's mother--about what kind of schooling she had, where she worked, and the sequence of her illnesses. It turns out she died from cancer of the lymph system, and not of the blood. She had polio when she was about 15 and was bedridden for a half a year, including many months in the hospital. Apparently she had an almost full recovery of her motor skills and was able to walk with only the faintest trace of a limp.

We had a huge amount of snow dump down. KE build a really steep but short sledding hill in our yard with all the snow he had to shovel off our walkway and driveway. It's very impressive, and E loves it. I've mostly been sitting around knitting on the sweater coat for my mom. As of yesterday I have two sleeves and the back finished, and I only have a couple of inches to go on the left front. I could possibly have the whole thing done by New Year's Eve, which is really my goal. I want to start on the fair isle yoke sweater for the new year.

Svigermor

KE dragged all of his Christmas decorations down from the attic over the weekend. The creme of the crop are two lovely Christmas mail holders that his mother made in 1967, the year that he was born. They are quite similar. Here's a full shot of one of them:

I was really moved to see them. KE's mother died in 1970, so he doesn't have many memories of her. In photographs she is quite lovely, with a charming cleft chin that E has inherited. I love seeing her handiwork in these mail holders. Check out the detail of the heart basket:

Clearly she was a patient woman! She was ill most of her life--she had polio and died of a rare form of blood cancer. Apparently she had to undergo a major operation while KE was in the womb--something about her intestines becoming twisted. As the story goes they had to lift the fetus in the womb out of her abdomen to complete the procedure. I want to find out as much as I can about her while all her siblings are alive and able to communicate (a brother and three sisters are still doing very well).

I've been knitting up a storm as usual. I wonder when this knitting jag is going to end? First up is a very simple lace scarf for Grannie for Christmas:

You can't go wrong with a lace pattern that has only one pattern row! I did a sloppy job on the blocking--it's much narrower at one end than the other--but it is quite lovely and a good use for the angora yarn I received in the Ravelry swap I participated in.

Next up is the heavy sweater coat I promised my Mom. We picked out the yarn while she was here. Since it's super bulky weight it goes really fast. This is the last two days of evening tv-knitting:

Not much to look at I'm afraid. The color is very washed out in the snapshot (darned flash). It's a very rich coppery color that has a hint of green in it--very cool.

We have some last minute Christmas shopping to do today, plus we need to get a tree. Otherwise we have all the food for Christmas Eve dinner. We're thrilled that the solstice is here and that the days will be getting longer and lighter. It is just so dark right now, even as far south in Norway as we are.

Tretten, fjorten...

Here are the two last sweaters of 2009. Since I frogged two of my twelve, it seems only right that I knit two more, right?

All things considered, I'm fairly happy with the way the tunic turned out. The sleeves are too long, but I think I may actually wear it in summer. I am, however, decidedly pleased with the way the Highlander sweater turned out. KE asked for a turtleneck, and since I had a full ball of yarn left it was no problem to add a bunch of length to the neck. This was a fun project.


Now I'm desperately trying to knit up a scarf for Grannie...

Jubileum!

As of this weekend we will have been here in Norway a full year. It's funny how being in another country with a family makes it seem less foreign. Much more of my energy goes to E and KE than to the kinds of things people usually do when they're "abroad." But then again, I've been in Norway so many times before (I think a total of about 5 years prior to this year) that it doesn't really seem that foreign to me here in the first place. Having a home of our own and knowing that I don't have to leave after a certain amount of time changes things too.

I think this year KE and I have really learned how socially isolated the two of us are by nature. For both of us our default mode is to do things alone, and we have been really unwilling to reach out to other people here more than at an absolute minimum. I'm not quite sure what to do about that. E has had some real social challenges in preschool this year. He's doing really well, all things considered. We've recently decided that we want to hold him back from starting school. We think he could really benefit from one more year of socialization and cultivating of independence in preschool before we throw him into the school machine.

I subscribed to Harper's magazine for years and always enjoyed the "Harper's Index." Here's a Kverulantinnen's Index for our family's first year in Norway:

Bachelor of Science degrees earned: 1. Grade point average earned: 4.04 (yup, that's my Summa Cum Laude husband, there!)

Preschools attended: 2

Sheep transported: 2

Sweaters knitted: 14*

Scholarly articles written and accepted for publication: 5

Computers in the home: 6

Trips taken to the USA: 2. Trips taken to Sweden: 2

Visits from Grandma: 2

Motor boats parked in the front yard: 2

Debt incurred: 0

* I am counting the Highlander sweater for KE here! If I hadn't been so tired last night I probably could have finished it then, but my throat was scratchy and I felt like I was coming down with a cold (E has been home almost all week with a bad cough), so I just read for a while and went to bed really early instead. Here's how it looked as of Wednesday:

I can't seem to photograph the color in the low winter light, so you'll just have to believe me when I say it is not pink. It's actually pretty manly, for a fuzzy variegated red yarn (!). Can't wait to see it on KE. Speaking of low winter light: I finally found an advent star that I like, and have replaced the red fiasco that emitted no light at all. Here it is in all its glory in the window by our kitchen table:

I totally love it, and want one for every window. KE says no, I can't spend 1000 NOK on advent stars. Note the darkness outside...this is taken between 4 and 5 o'clock in the evening.

It's no wonder I was tired when I came home from work yesterday. I had a really intense day trying to finish up some grading and the cabin article in Norwegian that is due today. I ended up emailing the editor and asking for an extension, which I never do. Turns out it's totally okay, but I really pride myself on making deadlines. Academics are such a lazy lot! I think I wrote between 6 and 7 pages, which is a lot for me in one day, considering it was in Norwegian rather than English. What's more, I think it's pretty good. In the article I'm covering six different texts (it's just an overview really), so each gets only 2 1/2 pages of analysis, max. The sections on Maurits Hansen's "Luren," Peter Christen Asbjørnsen's "Høifjeldsbilleder," and Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt are done, and I have at least a page each on Knut Hamsun's Pan, André Bjerke's De dødes tjern and Per Petterson's Ut og stjæle hester. Then, amazingly, on the ferry ride home I had a sudden clear notion of what to write in the conclusion, and banged out over a page of that! I think the reason that all this material came pouring out in one day is simply that I've been thinking about the project for a full year now, letting the ideas percolate as it were. At any rate, it was a rare writing rush, which will make it very easy to get the article polished up by my new deadline of next Tuesday.

In between all the writing I was able to finalize the grades for one of the classes (on Cora Sandel) I'm the censor for. I still have a whole set of papers to read for another class. I'm going to have to spend the day on that today, even though I would much rather work on the cabin article. The good thing about this other class (Sammensatte tekster) is that it gave me the opportunity to read DasBeckwerk's Claus Beck-Nielsen (1963-2001). En biografi, which I've been reading about for months now. It was the topic of one of the exam questions that the students could choose to write about. I ended up really liking the book. I found the author far less arrogant than I had expected, rather pathetic, really. I was a bit puzzled to see in the acknowledgments at the end that he thanks Jon Helt Haarder, among other people. Haarder is a literary scholar who has published a ton of articles on DasBeckwerk. It makes me suspicious that perhaps the two of them have cooked up some kind of mutually beneficial scheme whereby they alone create a literary movement and advance their own careers.

Rein energi

Today we had E's birthday party, and boy was it a hoot! We invited the grasshopper group from preschool, and four of the six came. This is the first time we've had a "real" birthday party with a group of kids, and though we were a bit apprehensive it worked out pretty well. After all, five-year-olds are pretty darned good at entertaining themselves:

Notice the whoopie cushion on the chair. That was the most popular gift. By the end of the two hour party the kids had blasted big holes in it. By the way, the Norwegian word for "whoopie cushion" is "prompepute," which I find unbearably cute ("fart pillow").

Yesterday I finished the back of the Drops Highlander sweater, and spread it out on the floor with the front to see what it looked like. KE walked by and commented that he might like to have it for a crazy kick-around sweater. I was thrilled, since I've been trying desperately to come up with a new sweater that he would like. At first we thought I could just add length, for him, but since I wasn't super happy with the way 0-228 was knitting up and since I was clearly going to have a ton of yarn left over, it was no big deal to rip it all out. Enter 85-3! I don't know why I didn't think to search the men's patterns before. Of course now I'm a little worried there won't be enough yarn, but that's all part of the excitement, I suppose.

I didn't get a chance to photograph the first attempt, but here's what 85-3 looks like in-progress:

Pretty wild, huh? It will be fun to see KE in it, especially since everything else I've knitted for him is so drab.

Insomnia

It's been a long time since I was struck with insomnia, but I'm right in the throes of it now, at 2:34:06 am. I've read through all my usual blogs and updated some project pages on Ravelry. I'm pretty sure I have developed a cavity. I am getting hungry. My ear hurts from wearing glasses while lying prone against a pillow on the sofa. The tip of the middle finger of my right hand is cracked and sore. My nose is a bit stuffy. You know, the usual minutia of sleeplessness.

This week in knitting, after finishing the linen tunic I knitted a crazy hat for my mother:

It's called a "Corrugated Touque" and it's from an old Vogue Knitting from the late 80s or early 90s. The yarn I used, Knitpicks Telemark was too thick, so it ended up being much larger than it was supposed to be, but my mom claims to like it that way since it covers her ears.

I then started in on the Drops a-line pullover using that Highlander yarn that R gave me. It's a goofy pattern: you start on size 15mm needles, drop down to size 12mm, and then finish the piece with size 9mm (but I used 8mm since 9mm is now practically the only size I don't already own). The change in gauge is enough to give the piece a distinct a-line shape. Kinda cool. I actually really like the way the variegated yarn is knitting up, though I'm less enthusiastic about the super big gauge at the bottom. I think I would have preferred to use the size 8mm needles throughout and do the shaping by decreases. But since I am planning on using it like a fleece pullover--a knock around thing that doesn't have to look nice--I guess it's okay that you can stick your fingers right through anywhere on the lower third of it.

Yesterday my mom and I went to Tjorven to get yarn for a sweater coat for her. She ended up choosing a really nice coppery blend that will be fun to knit. I also picked up 8 different colors of Drops Alpaca for the fair isle yoke pullover I'm planning as my first project for 2010. I'll be very curious to see how the colors I chose work out. It's been ages since I did any fair isle knitting. I know there's an awful lot to consider when putting together a fair isle pattern, and I'm really just going to wing this one, so I'm a bit apprehensive. Though not apprehensive enough to really do anything about it.

Done with oral exams for my class, and in the midst of grading final papers for other classes, plus trying to finish an article by the 18th. E turned 5 on Wednesday, and was ever so sweet and excited about it. We're having his birthday party on Sunday. I think 5 kids are coming, so that's not so bad.

Unfortunately, KE and I are both pretty cranky these days. I think winter is getting us both down a bit. It's been fun to have my mom here for the week, though. I drive her up to the airport later this morning, so I had really better try to get some sleep...

Strøtanker

Juhu! I finished the linen tunic tonight! And I also finished untwisting the three skeins of Drops Alpaca, with a little help at the end from KE. I think that I'm going to make this Drops sweater (number 108-10) the first thing I cast on for 2010, using the deep olive green Drops Alpaca as the base color of course. That gives me the rest of December to work through some stash yarns. If I can find big enough needles I'll start with the Drops Highlander yarn I got from R. Otherwise, I'll probably go with the Debbie Bliss Yoke Detail Sweater (Ravelry link) with the Elsebeth Lavold yarn that I bought last fall. Though I'm still not 100% convinced that is the right pattern for the yarn, I'm tired of having it in my stash.

I probably should really do some hat knitting instead of yet another sweater. I'd really like to do Jared Flood's Laurel (Ravelry link) to celebrate the arrival of Made in Brooklyn. Seldom have I seen one small book of patterns with such a high percentage of things I'd like to knit.

Suppebilder

I hate to be photographed, which makes it really hard to document the sweaters I knit. I get so awkward in front of the camera, and it's demoralizing to see the frumpy pictures. The sole exception appears to be when I'm cooking. When I cook I have something to do with my hands and something other than the camera to look at. So today I had KE take shots of two recent projects while I was making yummy Jamaican Pumpkin soup for my mom. The soup was great and the photographs look so much better than usual. Here's the Silke Tweed sweater again, this time accompanied by the Rowan Kidsilk Haze scarf, which coordinates really well, if I do say so myself...

Then there's the reknit of Gathered Pullover. It now has a totally wearable neckline, and although it doesn't show here, adding two inches to the length of the body helped immensely. It was a total bear to undo the cast on edge it was really, really worth it:

I'm hoping I can finish up the linen tunic by the end of the day tomorrow. The weather is miserable right now, so that should be possible.

My mom's here, which is great. She and E and I went out this evening with a group of parents and kids from E's preschool. We went to see Jul i blåfjell at the Oslo Nye Teater. It was fun, but we decided to leave at the intermission, since it was going to last an hour and 45 minutes, and we were all getting tired.

Friday I finally got to meet my mentor. I think we hit it off pretty well. We'll have our first meeting in January, so that will be interesting. Then today I was able to pick up my package from the Ivory Tower Fiber Freaks swap at the post office. I loved it! Thanks so much dreamhonu! This is the first time I've participated in a swap.

Mer i boks

I knew this week was going to be a busy one, and I'm still cranking through stuff. Yesterday I flew up to Trondheim to participate in a seminar on literature and the environment sponsored by the Institute for Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies at NTNU. I got to meet some of the people involved in the anthology of articles on cabins, a very smart doctoral student working on the Danish poet Inger Christensen, and a professor from UiO's American Studies program. He's an expat nearing retirement who has been living in Norway since the mid 1990s. He filled me in on a lot of what's going on in the ILOS department, which is where both American Studies and Comparative Literature are housed. It was one of those rare days in my life where I actually felt kind of smart, and was apparently perceived as such by the people I was talking with. Kind of amazing.

Today I have to present my research informally to my department at our monthly "faglig gryte" during the lunch hour. I'm going to wear my newly reworked Gathered Pullover, which is now two inches longer and has a much higher neckline. I think the gather hits me right between the boobs, which is a little distracting and unfortunate. I should probably have blocked it, but I'm eager to start wearing it, since I love the color. Then tomorrow is the big kick-off for the UiO mentoring program for female postdoctoral fellows and my Mom's arrival from the states (yay!). I'm dying to find out who my mentor is, and whether it will be someone I'll actually be able to work well with.

I also have to proofread my article on Erlend Loe and film for Edda today, and I really need to get started on the cabin article for the anthology, since it's due on the 17th. Being forced to talk about the project at the seminar and then today at the lunch talk is helping me formulate what I want to say. Beside the cabin article, the only things I really want to finish before Christmas are a paper proposal for IASS in Lund in August, and the Edvard Storm article, which isn't even on the list, since there's no deadline for it. Boy it's satisfying to have a list of eleven items when nine of them are crossed off.

I consider myself very virtuous for not casting on a new project on the trip up to Trondheim. I decided at the last minute before I left yesterday morning that I would be much more satisfied if I took the sleeve I was working on for the natural linen tunic. It's not particularly fun to knit, but fine for traveling. I got a fair amount done. I totally screwed up the increases, so it's a full 6 stitches too narrow at the widest part, but I'm just going to go with it and see what happens. In my experience armholes are pretty forgiving, though that may not be the case with linen.

While waiting for my flight in the morning a woman sitting next to me asked whether I had had trouble getting the needles through security. When I said that I never have she got excited and said that she'd definitely be knitting the next time she flew. Yay for that!

I boks

Phew. I feel like I've been in crank (and perhaps cranky?) mode the past few days, without much room to breathe. KE got called in rather suddenly to get the screws and metal plate operated out of his ankle on Thursday, which has had him out of commission since. Saturday I served a Thanksgiving dinner for 9, making every dang thing from scratch alone. Double phew. It was fun, but pretty exhausting. I'm becoming less and less of a social person as I get older. I'm so much better at one-on-one interactions than groups...

Yesterday I finished up the last revision on my Anne Holt article. Today I prepared my presentation for the seminar I'm participating in in Trondheim tomorrow, and applied for internal funding for the publication of my Cora Sandel book from nearly 3 years ago. I'm also close to diving into the writing for the cabin article in Norwegian for the cabin anthology that the folks up in Trondheim are putting together. I'm excited to meet them for the first time tomorrow!

I also started a half-assed attempt at Christmas cheer here at home with E's disastrous Advent calendar from last year and a new big red star for our living room window. E is much more aware of Christmas and Advent this year because of activities in preschool, so I feel a certain amount of pressure not to let him down.

I'm pretty demoralized in the knitting arena: I've been knitting nether garments for E, but my suspicion that they will just get washed in the machine and shrunk makes me extremely unmotivated to work on them. I reknit the front of my Gathered Pullover, which turned out great, but then I decided to unpick the cast on edge at the bottom to add a couple inches. Turns out it takes forever to undo a cast on edge. Argh. I just need to start adding two inches in length to all sweaters. KE, who has such a good eye for such things has mentioned that on my last two sweaters. All I really want to do now is cast on for a Debbie Bliss Yoke Detail Sweater (Ravelry link) with my stash of Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool. I may just take that with me for the trip to Trondheim, since I couldn't settle on an appropriate book to bring along with me.

Hurra!

Tuesday was a day of major accomplishments, after a harrowing week.

Last week KE made an appointment for me to take the drivers test on Tuesday. Here in Norway you have to rent a car from a driving instructor for the test (they require a car with the extra set of pedals). I had to take a couple of drivers' training test drives with a driving instructor who made me incredibly nervous in order to be allowed to rent the car. The man seriously made me so nervous that I could hardly function. I had to spend 3 hours in that car with him in the evenings driving in the dark and rain, and I was nearly in tears both evenings. What a huge relief it was when it actually came to taking the test. The man who evaluated me was totally mellow, I was barely nervous at all, and it was mid day on another rare mild and sunny November day. We drove through the lovely rural landscape around Drøbak, Ås, and Ski, and it went nearly perfectly. Words cannot express my relief over getting over this hurdle.

KE got a lot further on the wall project, and our kitchen was restored to nearly normal working order. Here he is contemplating what to do next.

We don't know what surface we want on the wall. We don't know what kind of countertop we want. We don't even really know whether we want cabinets on the wall, or whether we want to keep it open. Kind of a crazy way to remodel, but also fun, since we get to evaluate each element as we go along. E got to practice his carpentry skills with the scraps:


Meanwhile, I finally finished the Silke Tweed sweater. As I expected, it is a couple of inches too short to be flattering--KE saw that right away when I put it on to model (good eye on that guy). But it is a completed, wearable sweater, and the twelfth that I have knit this year. Yay!

I'll probably just live with it for a couple of weeks and add the extra inches over Christmas break. Otherwise I love the color, fit, and fabric of the finished product. Here's the full NaKniSweMoDo List:

1. Drops 58-18 turtleneck sweater (like)
2. Georgie cardigan (frogged)
3. Hourglass sweater (love)
4. Drops 110-1 jacket with pleats (frogged)
5. Islender sweater (loved by KE)
6. Green cardigan (like: used yarn recycled from the Georgie cardigan)
7. self-designed picot pullover (frogged)
8. Whisper cardigan (meh: need to re-do the bind off much more loosely and maybe it will look okay)
9. Gathered pullover (meh: need to re-do the neckline, which is way too low, but otherwise it looks promising)
10. Drops 112-24 linen tunic (love, love, love, despite almost destroying it)
11. Francis Revisited (love, love, love: used yarn recylced from the picot pullover)
12. Drops 54-10 Silke Tweed pullover (meh: need to add 2 inches to the length)

So I "only" have ten sweaters to show for all that knitting, but who cares. It was a fun challenge and I ended up with a couple of garments that I really enjoy wearing. I tried to start "nether garments" for E last night from Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitter's Almanac but I couldn't get gauge with the yarn I had been planning to use. I'll try something else tonight.

Workwise, Monday I got to the point where I could send off a draft on an essay was due this Thursday, and Tuesday I got word that my revisions to the article I wrote on Erlend Loe's use of film in Volvo lastvagnar have been accepted, and that the article will appear in the next issue of Edda. That's a big deal, since an article there is worth 3 times what an article in Scandinavian Studies is worth. Along with the Ibsen Studies article that will appear at around the same time I will already have "earned" the same amount of "points" as I would with a book published by a minor publisher. Crazy. Then Tuesday I had a breakthrough thought in the shower about how to conceptualize the cabin book. It has to do with Foucault's concepts of archaeologies and genealogies, and I am pleased to say that I came up with it while thinking about the dissertation chapter that my last remaining student from my previous job sent me a couple of weeks ago.

Byggeplass

Today, a gloriously sunny and mild day in late November, KE drove out to the lumber yard and bought all the materials he needs to build the wall between the kitchen and living room. It's very exciting! Things will be chaotic, especially since we're having Thanksgiving dinner at our house next Saturday, but oh well, we'll manage. The mess will if nothing else make it a memorable meal.

Here's a few before shots. First looking from the living room toward the kitchen:

KE is going to build a wall from the left wall out to the post that will cover the cabinets, but will leave a triangular opening at the top. As you can just glimpse in this picture, the fridge will go on this wall, which means that we can move the kitchen table in to the kitchen (it's been in the living room all this time since we moved in). We tried it out this morning and it was delightful:

Here's a shot looking from the kitchen into the living room through what will be the new wall:

And here's the partially deconstructed kitchen. KE had to unscrew all the lower cabinets and move them around to make room for the fridge. The opening where he's storing the doors will be the home of a new dishwasher, whenever we get around to buying one.

And finally, here is the total chaos that is our living room right now. All the new lumber, plus cabinets that we're not going to be using in the kitchen, plus general mess. Eeep.

Me, I'm planning on escaping to this blog on tiny houses, and of course knitting. Closing in on the end of the Silke Tweed sweater:

I really like it, but wish I had made it even longer. I am contemplating knitting "flaps" down from the edge at the back and front in order to make it more tunic like. I think it would work to unravel the cast on edge and knit down from there. We'll see. KE is nagging me to make long johns for E, though, so I need to finish this up quickly.

Gårsdagen...

Yesterday at work we had the big meeting to determine the fate of the course that I proposed, and I was thrilled with the result. The course will end up looking very different than my original proposal, but it will be a requirement for the undergraduate program in Nordic literature. I'm so glad I stuck my neck out on this one!

Yesterday I finished the first sleeve and got a few inches done on the second sleeve of the Silky Tweed pullover. And I walked to the ferry instead of taking the bus. And I remembered to buy a transit pass. And I ordered new glasses. And KE worked more on the kitchen. And we had a great conversation after E went to bed. And today I have a reasonable amount of time to get stuff done at work. So all in all, despite the pouring rain, this is a good Tuesday morning.

Tilfeldigheter

The other day I was met by this sign when I got off the subway on my way to work:
Needless to say, I found it disturbingly hilarious on all sorts of levels. I had planed to write a long rant about evangelizing, but I think I'll just drop it, and let the poster speak for itself.

KE's good friend R had a phase of knitting that he's now come out of. When KE went to visit him yesterday he sent him home with bags of yarn! I was so thrilled--this almost never happens to me. I like getting random things that I would never have chosen myself--figuring out how to use them appropriately and aesthetically is always a really fun challenge. The poopy yarn that my Mom gave me last year ended up working up into one of my all time favorite sweaters, for example, so this is super fun and exciting! Here they are:

Even though this looks green it is really a nice dense brown with grayish undertones (color 7895, which, as I just discovered, is actually called "Dark Green." Go figure!). R started knitting something for his wife using three strands of it together, so the clump at the left will be hard to unravel! It's a total of 400 grams. This is actually totally something I would buy for myself, so I'm stoked. I'm thinking of maybe a pullover with a fair isle yoke in other colors like this Drops 108-10 pattern?

Then there's the stuff the I wouldn't pick out, but actually really like: it's a discontinued Garnstudio Drops yarn called Highlander. Unfortunately it has 10% nylon, which makes it a bit scratchy, but the colors are very fun, and since it's super bulky weight, the knitting up process will be quick, whatever I decide to do with it. R had two colors:

A salmon-y mix (number 14, 350 grams), which isn't really enough to make more than a vest. I am not a wearer of vests, since I have trouble with temperature regulation--I can feel cold and have sweaty armpits at the same time! The only Garnstudio vest pattern I could find that I came close to liking was this one, Drops 71-22. However, a perverse part of my personality finds this one (Drops 97-7) edged with fuzzy Puddel yarn strangely appealing.

The other color is a reddish-plum mix (number 15, 550 grams):

Love that color combination too. I had thought it was all one color at first, and had been hoping to make a sweater coat for my Mom (she loves those, and loves these colors), but alas there isn't enough. I think what I can make is this Drops 0-228 pullover.

I'm almost done with the body of the silky tweed sweater. I'm really liking the way it knits up (though the knitting in the back of stitches for the twisted rib is a hassle), and am much more enthusiastic about it than I was with the beige linen tunic. I think I may rip that out and use the yarn to make another tunic like the black one I knit this summer. I love the drape of that one and the floppy neck.

Musikk

Today I was really lacking in motivation at work. It was a hard weekend family-wise, and I have a bunch of really tight deadlines. All that is getting me down, so I decided to escape a bit, and found my way to some old favorites on YouTube. I've been collecting some of Eivind's favorite songs on his website, so I thought I should do the same thing here. So here's a random selection:

"The Christian Life" by The Byrds. The fact that I'm a hard line atheist may make this choice appear paradoxical, but the fact is this song has fascinated me since I was a kid. It came out in 1968 on the album Sweetheart of the Rodeo, which my Dad played all the time.



Then there's Odd Nordstoga's "Lause ting," about the difficulty of getting motivated to take responsibility and become an adult.



"The Littlest Birds" by the Be Good Tanyas. Such a beautiful song!



And another perfect song from the late sixties:




I guess the common denominator is that they're all kind of mellow and wistful. Perfect for when I'm in a bit of a brown study.

Høstbilder

I gave up on waiting for it to be light enough to take pictures. So pardon the blurriness on this cavalcade of recent snapshots. First up is a quick shot of the evening sky from our deck around dinner time:

Then there's the finished stripy sweater, which is already getting dirty:

And here's the latest addition to our living room, the Vatne 108 chair that I bought used. You can just barely see the footstool in the background behind my knitting basket:

And now here's a snapshot of what's in that knitting basket. It's another reknit. As I mentioned in my last post I'm knitting this ribbed pullover from the lace pattern short sleeved sweater I started early this summer.


So far I really like it, though the knitting through the back loop and the silk content in the yarn is a little hard on my hands. Or maybe it's just that I'm knitting it like a maniac. It's the kind of project I love: mindless and drab!

But more exciting things are in the works. I've ordered Jared Flood's first book, Made in Brooklyn, and my Mom is going to bring it when she visits in December. I'm also gearing up for my next year's knitting agenda. I've decided I want to tackle fewer projects and focus on some really challenging things that I haven't had time for during this year of mass production. I'm aiming for four really lovely sweaters, though I haven't quite worked out exactly which ones (other than Alice Starmore's Fulmar and Jared Flood's Seneca).

Strategi

On Sunday I finished E's stripy sock sweater, and he has been wearing it ever since. I decided to go with ribbing at the bottom of the body and sleeves to match the neckline and to counteract the flipping action I was getting with the hem. It was pretty easy to remove the hem (just started unraveling down from the stripe above it) and knit down from the edge.

Rather than doing the logical thing and picking up the linen tunic to finish off (a sleeve and a half to go) or the short sleeved cardigan in Silke Tweed that I started earlier in the summer, I irrationally cast on for something new. I'm using the same Silke Tweed yarn, but in a different, more wearable pattern. It's a simple pullover knitted in purl two, knit one TBL ribbing. I like the look of the way it's knitting up, though I worry the silk content in the yarn may make it end up being overly baggy. I may add a little waist shaping, and will definitely make it longer than the pattern. It's another Drops pattern, by the way: Drops 54-10.

I can't take any knitting pictures yet because it's getting so dark here in Norway. There's not enough light before or after I go to work, so they'll have to wait until the weekend.

We had a great day on Sunday. I drove in to Oslo to buy a used chair that I found on the internet (picture to come). It's funny how much adding the chair to our sitting area tied the room together. It is upholstered in a kind of dove gray wool that is a little discolored (unfortunately), but blends perfectly with the rest of our stuff. It's a Vatne nr. 108 chair designed by a guy named Fredrik Kayser. Then on Monday KE massively cleaned the whole house! It was amazing what a difference it made. E was ecstatic when he came home--he loved how clean it was. Who knew that a four-year-old noticed such things. I was pretty darned ecstatic too!

My sister-in-law had us over for dinner on Sunday, which was really relaxing and fun. She's great. She got me inspired to start planning Thanksgiving dinner. Now I've committed (with some trepidation) to making it for her and some friends of ours on the last Saturday in November. Should be fun, actually--I'll use exactly the same menu I always use: roasted turkey, stuffing (bread based with chanterelle mushrooms, almonds, and pork sausage), gravy, mashed potatoes, roasted sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce from scratch (with orange peel), whole wheat rolls (from scratch), and a pumpkin pie (from scratch). I'll bake the pie and rolls the day before, and prepare the stuffing. KE will do the cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, and probably the gravy too. That leaves just the beans, sweet potatoes and turkey to mess with on the day itself. The problem is oven space--we have two stoves but only one oven that really works, and it only has one rack.

Yesterday I felt like a participant on Survivor at work, minus the voting people out. In my work group of 12 colleagues I am becoming more and more aware of the alliances that lie under the surface. I had one strong alliance coming in, and am now trying to build additional alliances with other people in the group. Yesterday I made two moves that I think will help strengthen my position with two other people. I've never been so aware of the strategy involved in the process of establishing oneself in a new work environment. Looking back at my previous job, I can see that I did absolutely nothing to build alliances there, which is probably why I felt so isolated. Here I've been much more proactive already. I don't mean to imply that all I care about is getting people to support me personally. Each of the "moves" I made yesterday involved taking action on things that I really believe in--one helping a colleague out with a small but important task, the other initiating a curriculum planning session. But I would be dishonest if I didn't say that I am constantly thinking of what I can do to improve my chances of getting a permanent position here.

Follow up on that disruptive student: I received an email last night in which the student thanked me for assigning the novel that they're reading for today's class. The student was really enjoying it. Not sure that quite makes up for all the poopy comments the student makes, but it does help a little.

Framskritt

Things went a little better today. For one thing, I got to be a student again, as we had a guest lecturer from the University of Copenhagen, Finn Hauberg Mortensen. He talked about the Comparative History of Nordic Literary Cultures project that I'm contributing to, and then later in the day he gave a lecture on the structure and rhetorical style of Ludvig Holberg's Moralske Tanker.

What went especially well for me today was conceptualizing the book. Rather than freaking out over the fact that I'm not writing yet, I've decided that I need to write a prospectus (a chapter outline, or "disposisjon" as it's called in Norwegian) in order to integrate the new thoughts and texts that I've been thinking about. It helped just to line up the chapters, list the key concepts, cultural events, and authors that I think will define them, and play with titles for them. It's a way of clarifying and refining my ideas, at a stage where I feel I'm not yet ready to write them. It's a weird stage to be in. Usually with articles it's so short that I don't even notice it--I can just jump in and start writing since the scope is so narrow that I can't go too far wrong. With this book, however, the scope is so huge and there are so many pieces that have to be in place first, that I can't really just jump in, eager as I am to do so.

I also did a little poking about on literary figures who might fit into the Enlightenment section that I've been trying to develop: the Norwegian civil servant/conspirator Povel Juel, who wrote a poem extolling the virtues of the simple life of the Sámi and the peasant farmer; and the Danish-German writer and salon hostess Friederike Brun, who is interesting to me not because of her work but because she had a Norwegian cabin built on her estate, Sophienholm, along with a Chinese pagoda and other exotic buildings. A colleague had also suggested Claus Frimann's poem "Birkebeener-Sang," but I read it and didn't see anything that I could use directly. But clearly I need to read more of his work, since he's really into the whole peasant thing, and has a book of poetry called Almuens Sange.

KE and I are both on pins and needles this evening. E is participating in his first ever sleep-over at his preschool. I think it's great that the teachers are willing to arrange it (two of them are sleeping over with the kids in the "gresshoppe" group of seven 5-year-olds), but I'm so worried about E! He refused to pack his pacifier (which he still sleeps with every night) because he was afraid the other kids would think he was a baby. He still has accidents (most recently this morning) and I would hate for that to happen to him there. Argh! We're both sitting here with our cell phones at our sides waiting for the call to come and get him. It will be very exciting to see how it goes!

Klagemur

I'm afraid this is going to be a whingy post. I have come down with a cold, and woke up this morning with an excruciatingly painful crick in my neck on top of the headache and sore throat. What's more, I'm pretty sure poor E has gotten sick too--he was coughing during the night. All this just as KE is finally getting over his cold. Too bad.

I'm also irritated as I am after every class I teach this term. I have one student who is so domineering and rude that s/he ruins the entire class for me every time. What's worse, other (non-native speaker) students have told me they have a hard time understanding this (native speaker) person's English--so not only does the student monopolize class time in a manner that I find rude, but does so in a way that the other students can't even understand. I won't go into details, but it all just leaves me frustrated and angry.

Things are progressing really slowly with the stripy sweater for E, and I'm getting absolutely no work done. I'm sure stress over the fact that I'm not writing is the reason behind my neck pain--my tension always goes to my neck. It will take weeks for it to go away too, which is a real bummer, especially since yesterday was the first morning that the pavement was icy. I'm dreading another winter of walking on ice--I totally stiffen up, which is the worst thing you can do to maintain balance. It is the one thing I dislike most about living in Norway.

Let's see here, desperately searching for the positives this week... I feel like I'm connecting well with my colleagues, there are two interesting lectures to go to today, I made yummy macaroni and cheese on Tuesday, E loves steamed broccoli, my gray mittens are great to wear, I managed to turn in my tax form so that they'll stop taking 50% of my wages (I should have turned it in back in January!) and I set up an appointment at the eye doctor's to get a vision test that I need in order to get my Norwegian driver's license...

I re-read André Bjerke's De dødes tjern. I hadn't realized that it was set during World War II. Other than the dates, there is no indication that the action takes place during war time. Weird. I also finished reading Camilla Collett's Amtmandens Døttre. I was a bit disappointed to see that there was no further mention of setrer or hytter in part two of the book, but there is enough in part one to build a conference paper on.

I also read Henrik Anker Bjerregaard's Et Fjeldeventyr from 1825. I had never heard of it before I saw a reference to it last week. It is the first Norwegian play (i.e. play written in Dano-Norwegian after 1814 with explicitly Norwegian characters and setting) and boy is it bad! It's a musical comedy and apparently it was wildly popular right up into the twentieth century. Henrik Wergeland wrote an epilogue, Henrik Ibsen wrote a prologue, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson reworked it, and Arne Garborg translated it to nynorsk. Having read it, I find it kind of shocking that these guys found it so compelling. It is fascinating in terms of cultural history, and may even fit into my cabin project, though, so it was well worth reading.

Overbelastet

My brain is shot. I need gentle entertainment like this generator of handwriting worksheets right now.

After the great relief it was on Wednesday to submit 1) my revision to the article on Erlend Loe's Volvo lastvagnar and 2) my two travel reimbursements from August (!) and April (!!!), the rest of my work week sort of collapsed. Thursday was an all-day administrative seminar for the Nordic literature section. I had a monstrous headache for most of the day, and contributed nothing useful to the discussion. I know that I'm being evaluated (consciously or unconsciously) every day by my colleagues, so it was frustrating and demoralizing. It didn't help that it took me two hours by bus, boat, subway, bus, and walking on a cold and rainy morning to get to the hotel that we held the seminar at.

Friday was an all-day seminar with lectures sponsored by the program in Aesthetics. I had planned to go to the whole thing, but after the first two lectures I could tell that a headache was coming on again, so I just went back to my office to work. I am really intrigued and perplexed by Aesthetics as a discipline. I find it so strange that they conceptualize an important part of the work they do as normative--that they still judge works of art in terms of some kind of criteria (that the two speakers were completely unable to articulate). I really don't see it as my job as a literary scholar to say which works are aesthetically pleasing and which aren't. I think of it as my job to talk about what is interesting in a given work, and to explain its connections to other cultural production, but not to say whether I think it's "good" or not. It is just as interesting to me to write about the crime novels of Anne Holt (which don't have very many redeeming aesthetic qualities) as it is to write about the novels of Cora Sandel (which are written in exquisitely beautiful prose).

Back at my office I got a couple of small practical things taken care of, then just stared wanly at the revised outline for my next article and ate almost an entire bag of potato chips. Not good. I could tell that what I really needed most of all was a nap, so I came home early and slept from 2:30 to 4:30. That gave me enough energy to make it through the evening without being overly cranky.

There are now two full sets of mittens with thumbs in the right place:

I'm not quite sure whether I'll do some embroidering on them or not. I ran out of yarn on the last couple of centimeters on the last thumb, but faked it by knitting with two strands of Finull in the same color. It didn't felt quite as well as the fabulous Vamsegarn, but I doubt anyone will notice.

When I felted the last two mittens I decided to throw in a tam that I had knit last winter too. I used all the short little bits of the leftover Jamieson yarn from the sweater my friend L knit. It was way too big, and since it was just made out of scrap yarn, it didn't seem like too much of a risk to felt it. The Shetland yarn also didn't felt as dramatically as the Vamsegarn, so I may just throw it in the machine again the next time I go to felt something. Here's how it looks:

What I've mostly been working on these days is the sock stripe sweater for E. Last night I finished the first arm, and this morning I knitted the neckline and started the second arm. It's cute if I do say so myself!

E let me try it on him a few minutes ago (for about 3 seconds) and it seems like a perfect fit. Hurra!

What has been languishing is my twelfth sweater:
I haven't touched it for weeks, but I thought I should upload a picture to show that it actually does exist, and isn't too far from being finished. Once I finish the last arm and sew in the myriad ends on E's sweater, I'm going to crank out the one and a half arms that are left on this one. It will be such a relief to get the 12 sweater challenge over with!

Inspirasjon

Well I made it through the hard theory reading, or rather I read carefully and selectively enough to be able to figure out how to use the theory and still have a relaxing weekend. Today at work I tackled the part of the article dealing with the parergon first, and it was relatively fast and painless. I'm closing in on finishing the revisions, and should be ready to send them off by the end of the day on Wednesday, which was what I had scheduled for myself.

Over the weekend Aftenposten did a piece on a house here on Nesodden. I've never seen it, but it's quite close to where we live. I was so flipping impressed and inspired that I have to link to the article. A) the house was built with all recycled material, B) it is simple and classic in both exterior and interior design, C), the owners did nearly all the work themselves, and D) one of the owners is the author of a Norwegian cookbook on legumes--a book that I simply must acquire. Basically, a part of me wants to be Lena Camilla Jensen. I'm green (well, a subtle celadon) with envy.

On Sunday we took E to the movies for the first time ever! It was such a fun day. We went in to Oslo to watch Knerten at the Colosseum theater. It's a spectacular building, and the movie was very fun and retro. It's an adaptation of beloved children's author Anne-Cath Vestly's books about Lillebror and his fantasy friend, Knerten (a stick). The premise is that his parents go a little crazy and give up their life in town for a ramshackle farm house in the middle of no where (my most favorite fantasy). The film also has an exceptionally high quotient of fantastic knitwear. Checkout Lillebror's sweater here:

So darned cute. I think it's inspired by Krokbragd weaving patterns (I just googled "krogbragd" and found this blog describing the technique, for those who don't didn't grow up with a tapestry weaver for a mother like me).

Oh. And on a less inspiring note, I guess I should mention that I knit two right mittens. Moreover, I felted them before I discovered the mistake. The felting turned out fabulous (I can highly recommend Vamsegarn and grønnsåpe--much better than the result from this spring using Fritidsgarn and regular laundry detergent), but I need to knit two left mittens now. Erk.

Parergon

I'm trying to do some of my most challenging intellectual work while the toilets next to my office are being renovated. It's really hard to carry on a conversation, let alone think and write when the workers are drilling and banging. Today I tried escaping to the library, but I'm spoiled and have a hard time reading when surrounded by munching, texting, and whispering undergraduates. Especially when I'm trying to read the following:

• Derrida, Jacques. The Truth in Painting. Trans. Geoff Bennington and Ian McLeod. Chicago: U Chicago P, 1987.
• Kjerkegaard, Stefan, Henrik Skov Nielsen and Kristin Ørjasæter, eds. Selvskreven - om litterær selvfremstilling. Århus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2006.
• Man, Paul de. "Autobiography as De-facement." Modern Language Notes 94.5 (1979): 919-930

During my graduate school years I trained myself to read hard material in bed because I didn't have a desk, and to this day I can't really absorb difficult reading in a sitting position. I got through the de Man article and and one of the essays in Selvskreven (the one on Jørgen Leth's 2005 book, Det uperfekte menneske), but I couldn't even get started on the Derrida. I'm going to have to take it home and sneak in early morning reading over the weekend.

The reason I'm reading this stuff is because I'm trying to revise my article on Erlend Loe's Volvo Lastvagner for publication in Edda. The peer reviewers had really helpful comments, and I'm deep into the revisions. I've restructured the paper a lot, creating a third section that wasn't in my original NorLit conference presentation. I've decided to make much more of the "I" in the text. I hadn't read the theory stuff on this topic at the time I submitted the article, but as soon as I dived into it back in August for the Hamsun conference presentation, I knew it would be really relevant. The Derrida is in there because the peer reviewers wanted me to ground my argument more in theory, and one of them suggested Derrida's notion of the Parergon as relevant to the narrative strategy I am trying to describe in the novel. I think what Derrida is writing about is the ancillary aspects of a painting (artist's signature, frame, etc.), but I've skimmed a few pages and of course his writing is so incredibly convoluted and indirect that you totally have to know that in advance to know that that is the subject of the chapter.

So, in the spirit of the parergon (the peripheral, the ostensibly trivial and ancillary), here are a few snippets from more pleasurable aspects of my life:

Yesterday evening I went to a lecture on Selbuvotter sponsored by the Nesodden Husflidlag. It was very inspiring and fun, though horrifically corny: the speaker broke up his lecture by having the audience sing the occasional verse from a song (to the tune of "O Tannenbaum") about the Selbu mitten ("Å Selbuvott, å Selbuvott...") written by a local patriot!

As it happens, the day before I had decided to try out some felting, and had started knitting a pair of plain mittens in Rauma Vamsegarn. Here's the first one (pardon the lame shot with the camera on my office computer):

It is so dang satisfying to make something that knits up so quickly. I'm not sure about the felting part, as the mitten is a pretty good fit as it is. I'll go ahead and try over the weekend anyway. The pattern says to use grønnsåpe, that all purpose pine scented cleaner that all Norwegians use.

Sukkersøtt

I think I'm in a sugar coma. Seldom have I had a less productive day. The only things I accomplished was to finish reading Knut Nærum's De dødes båt (very entertaining murder mystery containing multiple cabins) and skim through Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson's Synnøve Solbakken looking for the seter scenes. KE and I bought a bag of Twist chocolates while grocery shopping this morning, and downed the whole thing after lunch. NOT good!

Things have calmed down quite a bit with E. Here he is in full swing, playing "knight":

On Sunday we had KE's sister and nephew over in the evening. E loved having the visit. I baked one of my all-time favorite recipes, an apple cake using honey and kefir milk:

I first came across the recipe in a ladies' magazine back when I lived in Norway in the early 1990s. I used to make it all the time the two years I lived here, but haven't attempted it since. It was fun to dredge it up again--it's an incredibly easy recipe, and both tasty and relatively healthy, for a cake.

Though you can't tell it from the picture below, I've been progressing steadily on the sock sweater. I have split for the armholes, finished the back, and am halfway done with the front.

Uh, I think stripes are a recurring theme in E's wardrobe.

Random thoughts on the cabin book: originally I planned on the period 1814-2005 (with two sections, one on the nation-building period and one on the welfare state), but the more I think about it, the more reasons I see to start even earlier, with the Enlightenment period. During a brief conversation with the expert in early modern literature in my department, I learned that the cabin shows up all over the place in the didactic moral poetry of the period (not the literature I turn to first when looking for something to read). The farmer in his cabin is apparently one of the most prevalent and potent symbols in the Norwegian enlightenment. Plus I've already discovered lots of material on the seter (mountain dairy) that relates really closely to the cabins of the nation building period.

It would be great to have three sections to the book (Enlightenment, Nation-Building, Welfare State) for formal reasons. For tactical reasons it would be fantastic to have 1/3 of my book covering the early modern period: that is one of three specializations my department will be asking for in their next literature hire. And for personal reasons, I'm actually really starting to like the period, based on the little bit of work I've been doing on the 18th century writer Edvard Storm over the past month. I've been reading so much material in Gothic type that I'm actually starting to get the hang of it, and my speed is increasing significantly. It's so incredibly cool to be able to breeze through a couple of pages of an 18th century book in Gothic type!

Latest music discovery: Lily Allen. I was intrigued by her song "Fuck You" (the contrast between the sugary sweet melody and voice and the really vicious lyrics) but didn't quite know what to make of it until I discovered that it's an anti-Bush song. Rock on! (ETA: whoops, I may have been overly enthusiastic. Just discovered Dan Bull's open letter to Lily Allen thanks to Jilltxt.) I guess I should also fess up to the fact that my sordid Eurotrash past leads me to totally dig Lady Gaga too. There's something about her deadpan delivery and shamelessly (but self-ironic) commercial sound that I can't resist. No accounting for taste, right? To balance it out, KE's intense passion for Wilco is starting to rub off on me. We've been listening to their first album, A.M., in the car and I love it. It has so many echoes of the Byrds. And of course Eels is still probably my favorite current artist.