Lørdagskos

I woke up early this morning in a great mood. If I'm lucky I'll have two hours to myself. Yay for Saturday mornings! There's a lot that's good at work: I made it through lecture number 5 in my class, which means I now have three weeks off from teaching, and can focus intensly on my research, finally. On Thursday I walked into my office to find that the iMac I ordered was all set up, and the nasty old PC had disappeared.

I didn't quite reach my goal of finishing all outstanding work projects by the first of March so that I could start in on the cabin book. I still have a little bit left on the Holt article revision, a book review to write, and a MA thesis grade to evaluate (the student has petitioned the grade assigned--I'm an outside reviewer). But it's all interesting and useful work, perhaps even relevant to the book. I plan to include a chapter on crime fiction in the book, so the Holt article isn't as in left field as one might think. The book review will be of an anthology of articles on Ibsen, and I'm always needing to beef up my knowledge of Ibsen scholarship (and of course Ibsen fits into the cabin book project too: Peer Gynt and Når vi døde vågner have fabulous cabin scenes).

The thesis is on two contemporary novels, Nikolaj Frobenius' Teori og praksis and Dag Solstad's Armand V: Fotnoter til en uutgravd roman. I hadn't read either of them before, and I have to say I'm so very glad that I was asked to review the grade on this thesis, as both are really interesting. The Solstad novel even contains a cabin scene! Frobenius' book explores life in a "drabantby" (satellite town), and contains some really wonderful writing about the attempt to plan happiness. So interesting for an architecture groupie like me! Plus it's really great to get a chance to review the grading process for theses here, as it's quite different--so much more thorough than what I'm used to in the U.S.

My old life in the U.S. seems so incredibly distant now. Other than regular email and Skype contact with my mother, it's all sort of disappearing. I was going to write a post with a list of things I miss about the the U.S., but I only came up with three things! They were: my 15-minute bike ride to work, Starbuck's coffee almond fudge ice cream, and microbrew porters. Otherwise, I'm glad, glad, glad to be here. I can't blog about it, but I am really not happy with some interactions I've had with colleagues back home. I'm technically on unpaid leave, so I still have duties at and communication with that university. It's not fun.

Last night I finished the second arm, joined it to the body, and knitted almost 10 cm on the raglan yoke on the Hourglass sweater. I'm pretty sure I'll be able to wear it to work on Monday, though for some reason it's looking really short to me. I haven't sewn the hem yet, so it's rolling a lot and I'm hoping that's the reason. Here 'tis:

"Det er typisk norsk å være god"

Today I had a fun day at work. I am revising my article on Anne Holt's crime fiction based on suggestions from my editor. He suggested that I try to frame my analysis with some kind of anecdote that illustrates the issues at stake in the Holt books. I came across Gro Harlem Brundtland's famous slogan "It is typically Norwegian to be good" in a book I was skimming (Terje Tvedt's Verdensbilder og selvbilder: en humanitær stormakts intellektuelle historie from 2002) and that got me thinking that it would be a good idea to track down the source of the slogan to see if that might work to contextualize my article. I've heard the quote in many contexts over the years, but never really thought about its origins.

It turned out to be harder than you might think to find. Wikipedia listed it as being from Harlem Brundtland's 1992 New Year's speech, which is correct. But her speeches haven't been published in book form, and the reference librarian at the University of Oslo library had no idea where to find it. I was shocked! I called the Norwegian Labor party headquarters and they didn't have it. Neither did the Workers' Movement archives The archivist there suggested that I try the Norwegian Broadcasting System's library. The person there found it in a database called ATekst, which it turns out I have access to through the University of Oslo! I feel like storming over to that reference librarian and reading her the riot act, but of course I won't.

At any rate, I found the speech really interesting to read, and it fit perfectly as an introductory anecdote to my article, so I'm very pleased with today's work! Here's the section of the speech that the quote is from:

Norge har mange muligheter. Se til verkstedindustrien som har økt eksporten de seneste årene, til den positive utviklingen i reiselivet, til oljevirksomheten, skipsfarten vår og fiskerinæringen. Vi har mye å bygge videre på. Kværner - som har bedrifter mange steder i landet - fikk like før jul en stor kontrakt i skarp konkurranse med utenlandske selskaper. Dette viser at norsk kan og vil. Vi kan konkurrere både på pris og kvalitet. Fotballjentene, håndballjentene, skigutta og Oslofilharmonikerne hevder seg i verdenstoppen. På samme måte skal vi vise at norsk næringsliv klarer seg internasjonalt. Trenger vi et nytt slagord? Det er typisk norsk å være god.

Scary, huh? Especially coming from a social democrat. It shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone that Arbeiderpartiet went on to dismantle major elements of the welfare state throughout the course of the 1990s!

But of course all work and no knitting makes Kverulantinnen a dull girl. I've been "reknitting," which is to say now that our stuff is here I have access to my stash again, and I've decided to knit a new version of the Hourglass sweater from December in a smaller size. I've got the body done up to the armholes and one sleeve close to finished. It's a quickie!

...ferdig!

And now, finally, I can say that I'm done with the cabled cardigan, "Georgie." I'm not happy about the end results. As predicted, it's a tad too short and too roomy, and the arms are way too long. But I do think it's at least wearable.

I'm thinking maybe over a summery dress it will be cute?

We're so relieved that our shipment of stuff arrived and we got it all inside the house. KE had a dreadful day renting a trailer and finding his way down to Oslo harbor to get the crate, which he then had to take apart. It took him something like four hours to get back home (including some scary driving), then we had a marathon session of moving boxes through the snow and into the house. In the end it was great to be reunited with our stuff. I'm actually glad we went through the horrible process of sorting for the move, because now everything we unpack is something we know we either need, love, or both. So far I've unpacked one box of fragile glass things and nothing in it was broken, so that bodes well for the rest.

Nesten...

Okay. I admit to being thoroughly sick of knitting the green cardigan now. I finished all the knitting, and am well underway on the finishing. I just need to steam block one sleeve, sew on one button, and then inset the two sleeves and the whole thing is done. But now I'm at that listless stage where I'm no longer excited about the project and am skeptical that I'll like the end result. I didn't realize when I chose the pattern how short it would be, and it seems really wide too, so we'll see. It doesn't help that we don't have a mirror that reaches below my neck here in this house either!

I figured out what to do with the left over Knitpicks Merino wool I bought in December. Interweave press has a free pattern for a shawl in DK weight yarn, and I think what I have left is just the right amount. The pattern is called Little Arrowhead. All the knitters here in Norway seem to be really into shawls, so I'm being tempted to try one, even though I kind of doubt I'll really wear it. But at least I'll use up the yarn!

I'm also starting to get interested in maybe knitting a pair of Latvian mittens out of my leftover Finull. I saw a woman with some on the bus the other day, and they were totally spectacular. I've never been able to get very excited about Selbu mittens, but these Latvians with 3 or 4 colors and a much denser pattern are very tempting to try to knit.

Beyond that, I'm still excited about the NaKniSweMoDo project for the year. Next up will be finishing KE's Islender, then a sort of dressy jacket from Sandnes. I will use the Elsebeth Lavold silky wool that I bought back in the fall. I think the rich indigo color will work well for the pattern.

In TV news, we have so been enjoying watching the 2006 British police drama Life on Mars. The premise is that the protagonist is injured in a car crash in 2006, goes into a coma, and wakes up in 1973. The retro factor is very high, and the manipulation of the two narrative time planes is very well done. Sounds from the hospital and dream images break into the 1973 reality, creating strange interferences.

Watching the penultimate episode last night got us thinking about all the films and shows we know that play with narrative, point of view, artifice, and time, and how much we love that. Here's an incomplete list:

Memento
The Truman Show
Matchstick Man
The Sixth Sense
Time Code
Sliding Doors (which we haven't seen)
The Crying Game
Rebecca
Run Lola Run (which we also haven't seen)
Back to the Future
Time Bandits
Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Persona
Night on Earth (another we haven't seen)
D-Day (the Dogma 95 television experiment, which we haven't seen either)

I'm sure we're missing other important ones... (ETA: Being John Malkovich and Vantage Point)

15 plater

There's a thing going around Facebook where you're supposed to list 15 albums that had a profound impact on you. I couldn't resist explaining why I chose the ones I did. Here's the post:

I'm a little embarrassed about my list, so I feel the need to contextualize. I don't have very sophisticated or challenging taste in music. I like anything I can dance to and I don't like it too noisy. I grew up with a father who had a fantastic record collection. He had all the major bands of the late 60s and early 70s, plus a great selection of classical music. I was thoroughly versed in the Beatles, the Who, the Kinks, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, Santana, Steely Dan, the Band, Bob Dylan, etc., etc., etc. from before I was able to make any individual choices about music.

Of that extensive collection, the two that stood out the most as albums for me as a kid (beyond the obvious single cuts like "She Caught the Katy," "Yellow Submarine," or "Rocky Racoon") are:

1. The Band – Cahoots (1971). The emotions stirred by the song "The Moon Struck One" were almost unbearable. I would just lie there on the red (!) wall-to-wall carpet in our living room and freak out whenever my father played this album. And when I die you can play "When I Paint My Masterpiece" at the memorial.

2. The Beach Boys – Sunflower (1970). An incredibly rich, incredibly evocative album. Don't get me wrong, I love teeny-bopper Beach Boys too, but this one was just so big and full and lovely.

The first three albums I remember borrowing from my Dad's collection (and making my own as it were) are:

3. Dire Straits – Dire Straits (1978). I would have been 11 or 12. When I put this record on in my room I felt like I was entering an entirely new – adult and slightly sexy and dangerous – world. It was a very intense experience to listen to this alone.

4. W.A.Mozart – Divertimenti. Music I would listen to after dark alone in my room during the summer, probably as a high school freshman. Pavilions and formal gardens would open up in my mind. This is still the music that speaks most directly to me.

5. The Kinks – Village Green Preservation Society (1968). My favorite concept album, which I probably discovered while a freshman or sophomore in high school. I loved the meta aspect of people taking pictures of each other (and thought it was brilliantly used in a HP commercial a couple of years back). I was a complete anglophile, and really got into the heavily ironic attempt to capture a dying culture.

Then we get to the music that I discovered on my own, beyond my father's record collection.

6. The Police – Outlandos d'Amour (1978). I distinctly remember taking the bus downtown to buy this record. I had seen the Police on HBO's Video Jukebox and they appealed to me instantly. Obviously I developed a huge crush on Sting, but way beyond that I really got into the watered down punk and reggae mixture. I am NOT a fan of Sting's solo career, but I bought every Police album while in high school.

7. Talking Heads – More Songs about Buildings and Food (1978). The moment that I heard "Take Me to the River" while listening to trashy pop music on KISM radio in Bellingham, I had an overwhelming feeling of discovering something entirely different. As with Dire Straits, a whole new world opened up for me. I don't think I actually ever owned this album, but Talking Heads were a huge part of how I tried to identify myself as a teenager and young adult.

8. Blondie – Parallel Lines (1978). "Heart of Glass" was another song that took me right out of Bellingham and Silver Beach Elementary School and into another, far more adult and complex world. And then the whole album was filled with unfamiliar emotions and problems. Fascinating and edgy for a fifth grader!

9. XTC – English Settlement (1982). My friend Golden turned me on to XTC. The connection was immediate. I had already heard "Senses Working Overtime" on KISM in the car with my mother. Everything from the amazing cover art (an image of the bronze age horse at Uffington) to all the songs just hit right home. I played the cassette every single morning while getting ready for school my sophomore year of high school.

10. REM – Murmur (1983). I was late in discovering this band. It wasn't until I was already in my second year of college that I found them, and I don't really remember how it happened. Probably Golden again! This one is really connected to establishing a life of my own, and I played it constantly in my very first apartment. I moved into it right around when I turned 19 and was working as a barista at Tony's Coffee in Fairhaven in Bellingham.

11. They Might Be Giants – Flood (1990). Kaja and Brian Potter introduced me to this, and the silliness of TMBG became my salvation through my disastrous and very short first marriage. "Particle Man" still makes me very happy every time I hear it. I was in graduate school and spent endless hours trying to figure out if the music was brilliant or just inane.

12. Dwight Yokam – If there Was a Way (1990). I grew up on the west coast but have strong family ties to the midwest. Most of my relatives watched NASCAR racing before it was cool, and country music was a huge part of my upbringing. My love for Dwight Yokam's music is a kind of back-to-the-roots and anti-cool thing for me. He is, in my opinion, the most intellectually challenging country artist out there, and his take on the Bakersfield style is just freakin' brilliant. "The Distance Between You and Me" is the best song about a dying relationship ever.

13. Björk – Debut (1993). Divorced and on a Fulbright to Norway. "Big Time Sensuality" and just the sheer hugeness of this music was totally refreshing and inspiring.

14. Various Artists – Afro-Latino (Putumayo World Music, 1998). When I moved to Phoenix I started dancing salsa, and this album opened up a whole new world for me. I like Latin American salsa music well enough (especially Carlos Vives), but the African side of things is just so much more exciting. It's less over-produced and less cliché.

15. Eels – Souljacker (2001). Knut Einar introduced me to Eels right when we got together in 2004, and it's sort of the soundtrack of our life together. A little depressing, very smart, a little bitter, very melodious.

Vinter

Check out my new winter hat!

Anne's post on winter made me want to write about winter too, especially since I'm experiencing a real one for the first time in a long time. The weather has turned spectacular here in the Oslo region -- brilliant sunshine, bone-cracking cold, and mounds of pristine snow. If winter has to be cold (a proposition that I, as a Pacific Northwesterner, question) at least let it be like this.

What I don't like: the layer upon layer of outerwear it takes just to step outside the door; the limits to my mobility (I don't really ski, don't yet know how to bicycle on ice, don't yet feel comfortable driving, have trouble walking on the icy sidewalks, etc.)

What I do like: the briskness; the silence; the sound of walking on snow (especially snow on the wooden ferry landing at Aker brygge); the minimalist look of our yard covered in snow; the good excuse for doing tons of knitting.

I can't say that I experience the wild seasonal swings that Anne does. I'm a bit envious! But I'm basically a very even-keeled person. I'm also a basically comfort seeker. I like summer because it takes less effort to dress for it and because there are berries and flowers around. As long as I'm comfortable (not too hot, wet, or cold), I'm not all that affected by the season.

Yesterday was a strange day for me. I had a very short work day, since KE was sick and I needed to help out more with E. But it was also incredibly productive. I have had two articles languishing for quite a while now, and both had deadlines at the end of January. My nasty cold knocked me off schedule. I hate missing deadlines and am usually early for everything, so this was really eating away at me. For some reason, both of them finally came together yesterday. I know neither of them is as good as it should be, but luckily I have the luxury of getting editorial feedback and a round or two of revisions, so I'm hopeful that they'll eventually turn out decent.

One is the Anne Holt article I've mentioned earlier, and the other is an article on Erlend Loe's Doppler and Volvo lastvagnar. I have no idea whether the journal I submitted it to will accept it, and I'm a little anxious since I go against the mainstream of what has been written to date about this particular author (I find him very nuanced and intelligent, while he is usually disparaged for being totally superficial). I wrote it in Norwegian since it was based on my job talk for the position here in Oslo. That is getting easier and easier for me to do. I've learned that as long as I don't translate from one language to another (i.e. not take a conference paper in English and revise it as an article in Norwegian or vice versa), I'm usually okay.

Risikosamfunnet

So I've been reading all the crime novels written by Anne Holt for an anthology on Nordic crime fiction that I was browbeaten into contributing to. One of them features a mastermind serial killer who, against common wisdom, turns out to be female. I have to say that Anne Holt gets a lot of flak for being a sloppy writer, for being a celebrity (in Norway, which doesn't take much, but she's the real deal, even here), etc., but after having read all eleven (!) novels, I have to say that I have found them very thought provoking. Collectively they are an interesting commentary on and chronicle of Norway's cultural growing pains in the face of globalization.

The female serial killer reflects at one point on her feelings about risk taking. She is watching someone engaging in some extreme sport or another (I think it's paragliding), which she views with the utmost contempt. For her, all they're doing is risking their physical existence, and only during the duration of whatever activity it is. In her own life, in contrast, she risks everything all the time. Now, I'm not planning on going out and becoming a serial killer, but what she says really fascinates me:

"Hun selv tok sjansen på selve livet. Det var spenningen ved aldri å lande, aldri å komme i mål, som gjorde henne unik. Risikoen økte for hver dag, slik hun ønsket og villet det. Den var der bestandig, intens og livsgledende: Sjansen for å bli innhentet og avslørt." (Holt 2005 (2004): 584)

For some reason the passage really struck me. In a way, it's kind of parallel to what I think the life of an intellectual or artist can and should be. I've always found it infinitely more interesting to challenge myself intellectually than physically. I guess I realized pretty early on that I could reach the limits of my physical body within a certain time frame, and that the amount of effort it would take to achieve absolutely minute improvements in performance just wasn't interesting to me. Theoretically, I could train for hours and hours and still never be as good as the next level (though I could possibly get close working that hard).

Intellectually, however, (and probably creatively as well) there's really no knowing how far one can go, and of course the number of years one has to experiment is on average much longer. That makes it much more appealing to pursue, much more worth taking a risk and committing time and energy to.

I love the metaphor of "not landing" not "reaching the goal" from the serial killer.

Along similar lines, I recently got an email from a graduate student asking for career advice. I really sympathize with this particular student, and took a long time to ponder my response. And actually, I was pretty suprised at what I eventually wrote:

I do think that one of life's "lessons" (corny, I know) at middle age is the realization that not all one's dreams are going to be fulfilled. I think at a certain point (for me it's happening right now, at 41), pragmatism starts to kick in, and that can have a pretty profound impact on one's self image.The realization that you can't do and be everything you though you could (or would) can either lead to despair (and really obnoxious acting out, the ubiquetous midlife crisis) or to embracing one's skills, the things that do (despite everything) give meaning and personal satisfaction.

There's no way to know whether that was helpful to him, but it did give me a certain clarity about where I'm at right now.

I've also carried with me for a couple of years now the words of a really good friend (you know who you are!) who mused about turning fifty that she was in a phase where she felt that she had already experienced everything. I'm not really sure what I think about that, and really didn't have a good response to her at the time.

Not sure how (or if) any of these thoughts fit together. I guess maybe this can be categorized as musing about middle age? In a way it's hopeful, since those unmeasurable mental and creative capacities are still tempting me...

Helt sausa

Those are KE's words to describe my current state of health. We've all been wiped out all week with a nasty cold. Pretty darn miserable. Unable to do anything productive, not even knit. Feeling better today though. Can't wait for this to be over.

A room of one's own

Lately I've been obsessing over the fact that I'm going to have my own room again, once our renters move out and we take over and renovate the whole house. As usual, I want the smallest room to make a little nest in.

Occasionally people on the blogs I frequent display their own work spaces, and I find them utterly absorbing. One that has stuck with me for quite a while now is the studio of Alicia Paulson from the blog Posy gets Cozy. I would never in a million years want the actual contents of the studio (not my style at all), but I love the overall effect of organized chaos. Interestingly, if you do a Flickr search for "craft room" a very high percentage of them have a similar aqua color on the walls.

I've got a little more space than Strikkelise has in her hobby room, and the walls are unpainted wood paneling. I'm also planning on finishing knitting a lace curtain that I started for the window back in 2004.

There have also been some fabulous work spaces on Apartment Therapy, but I can't seem to track down the ones that I like anymore, since it's been a while.

In my little room (which is currently E's bedroom) there will be just enough room for a desk (which we already have) and a shelving unit (which we don't). I definitely want glass doors on the shelving units so that I can display things (yarn, books, fabric) without a major dust problem.

ETA: Here's another aqua craft room. I love it that the owner photographed it in a very messy state! Now since I have wood paneling there's no way I'm going to paint the walls aqua--I just find it an interesting coincidence that so many craft rooms are nearly the same color.

E (again) TA: Hilde posted some great craft room ideas here (scroll down to the seventh [!] picture in the post in particular), one of which I'm definitely going to implement: She used a "settekasse" (typesetter's tray? can't remember what they're called in English) for spools of thread. KE has a settekasse in the attic that he's willing to let me confiscate, at least temporarily. I am really excited to try this because I haven't yet worked out a decent way to store spools of thread, and this may be the ticket. I currently just stuff them into an overfilled plastic bag that's stuffed into a overfilled basket.