Putekrig

I write this on my laptop at our new kitchen table! It's so lovely to have one that fits the space we have to work with, finally. It took a long day of furniture shopping, a session combing www.finn.no, and a long drive to some guy's house to get it. We ended up with a very plain oiled oak table from IKEA, purchased used for half the price. It looks like this:
Like I said, very plain! We don't have new chairs yet, so at the moment we're just using some old mismatched ones that don't look all that great. We're kind of thinking about buying four of these, though we're not sure yet (that's light blue, not white):

In the meantime, KE was very kind and oiled and tinkered with the sewing machine until he got it to work flawlessly, so I was able to pick up the great outdoor pillow/cushion project again (without trauma, even!). I got three of the five slipcovers sewn and one of the two patchwork pillows sewn. Well, that's not entirely true--the machine seams are done and I need to whipstitch the openings on all of them. For right now, this gives a hint of what it will look like:

And here's a before shot of the cushions that KE bought a decade ago. The fabric is starting to rot and the foam is coming out. Time to cover them up, dontcha think?!


Still working on the Gathered Pullover. One sleeve done, the other half done. I have knit past the cable pattern and have divided the front and back at the armholes. I'm working on the back while I mull over how much higher I want to start the neck opening at the front.

Avledet

You would think I would practically have finished the gathered pullover, since it is such a quick knit (and I have indeed come pretty far) but you would be wrong.

No, I suddenly got it into my head that I simply had to make a patchwork pillow case for our outdoor furniture. We have a pretty solid table, chairs and sofa that we use all the time. The set is about 15 years old, as are the cushions. Unfortunately the cushions are really starting to wear, and I planned to cover them with the same unbleached linen that I bought at IKEA for our living room curtains. Even more unfortunately, it turns out our sewing machine (which has been in storage since 2004) isn't feeling very good, so my attempt to sew up the very simple slipcovers for the cushions was foiled. Yet another of my attempts to sew with a machine fails!

I've been looking at all the patchwork pillows that Alicia Paulson makes on Posie Gets Cozy and thinking "I can do that." After all my Grannie showed me years ago how to do simple patchwork square. And so I did:

I sewed them together by hand. I'm going to make a simple back out of the same unbleached linen that the cushions will (eventually, when I fix the machine) be covered with. It was fun and easy, so I'll probably make another.

Yesterday evening we had the end-of-the-schoolyear party for E's preschool. We had a picnic at Hellviktangen (the best local beach). Everyone brought their own dinner, but shared cakes, and the kids ran around, waded in the fjord, and fished for crabs. The preschool teachers had put togther big folders of all the kids' artwork and distributed them ceremoniously, like a diploma. Those kids were so proud! All of them, E included, sat right down to look at their own art and show it to their parents. Very fun, especially when the folder is almost as big as E himself!


ETA: The geraniums bloomed. And the color is.... RED for both of them. Despite being a red-hater, I'm surprisingly cheered by them:

Vi skal ikkje sove bort sumarnatta

It's real summer here in Norway!

What better than knitting and dreaming and planning out on the patio?

Diverse

I finished knitting the Whisper Cardigan last night, and the end result is an "ugh" I think. I'm not wild about the blue, since I'm in a total drab/neutral phase right now.


I'm going to need to do the bind off over again, but am feeling bummed about the project so I'll need to let it stew in time out for a few days. Some people on Ravelry have suggested doing a tubular bind off, since that is supposedly more elastic than other types. If I do that, then I will have learned three new things, which probably makes the project worth it in the end. The other two are 1) that it is vastly better to pick up dropped stitches with a crochet hook than with the knitting needles (I dropped a lot of stitches on this project) and 2) how to wrap the end stitches on short rows so that you don't get a hole in the fabric.

It is with great gusto that I tore into the next project, yet another sweater that everyone on Ravelry has knit, the Gathered Pullover from Interweave Knits.

I don't really have a good answer as to why I keep knitting the same things that everyone else is knitting. I suppose it's partly because they are appealing designs and partly because I consciously or unconsciously want to share in some kind of group experience. At any rate, I think this will be the last of knitting super popular projects for a while, and I can go back to my life of the obscure.

Today was a brilliant day, 24 celsius and beaming sunshine (hence the terrible photographs from 8pm this evening). I walked down to the ferry this morning, which is a brisk 25-minute walk, and had all sorts of ideas bubbling in my head. I'm pleased that the living room is starting to come together, and even more pleased that KE has agreed to go furniture shopping tomorrow.

KE and I had a rousing (at times strained) two day discussion trying to define what "art" is. He had that as an assignment for his last ever undergraduate course (yay!), which just started this week. It is fascinating and a little distressing how good we are at talking past each other some times! But as always, it ended up being stimulating and satisfying.

Pliktoppfyllende

Just caught wind of the news about Nevada Senator John Ensign, who apparently had an affair and paid off his mistress, her husband, and their son, all of whom were members of his staff. Ouch! This from a one-time higher up in the ridiculous Promise Keepers organization, leader of the campaign to impeach Bill Clinton, advocate for "opposite marriage," and critic of Alaska Senator Larry Craig for playing footsie in a men's room.

Now don't get me wrong. I have no illusions that politicians on the other side have any more integrity. As the saying goes, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. But I have to admit that I just totally love it when the utter hypocrisy of conservatives like Ensign is exposed like this. The only difference between the two parties is that the Democrats pretty much don't bother to preach morality as they're dinking around, while for the Republicans the moralizing appears to be mandatory.

Meanwhile, I'm feeling exceptionally virtuous. I actually picked up the Whisper Cardigan and got the ribbing done, after having taken an extraordinary amout of time to pick up the correct number of stitches. I don't know why that was so difficult for me. I'm onto the back now, with only 7 inches of plain stockinette to go... Yay!

Ferdig

Just finished off the little guernsey for E that I started last summer. It's always a relief to finish a project. Now I really don't have anything standing in the way of the Whisper Cardigan except my own apathy. I'm thinking of starting something else instead: either the two-colored shetland pullover I mentioned in an earlier post, or else the ubiquitous Gathered Pullover (Ravelry link) using the Drops Fine Merino that I bought last month.

By the way, yesterday was our fifth wedding anniversary. I forgot, but KE reminded me. We so don't make a big deal about such things. Imagine my bemusement when I found out that my ideological and personal antithesis (in a good way), Sara Janssen, has her anniversary on the same day. Her gushing post on nine years of marriage puts me to shame! Sorry KE... you're the bee's knees, but I'm just not the gushing type.

PS: Found this nifty idea for using mason jars for storage of crafty stuff. Easy squeezy.

Små steg

Little by little we're starting to move into the main part of the house. First priority was getting E's bedroom set up. I think he really likes it, and has been asking every day for one of us to come play with him in his room. It doesn't show in the picture, but the room has a really high ceiling, so even though it's on the dark side of the house (facing the granite wall) and is relatively small, it has a good feel. Still need to get another "Trofast" frame from Ikea for the blue bins. I like the thought that this is where he'll be until he leaves home, the room he will most identify as his "gutterom."

Over the weekend KE's nephew helped us move the refrigerator over, so now we're cooking on this side of the duplex. Of course we haven't bothered to move everything over at once, so it seems like we have to run over to the other side to get something for each meal we prepare. But we have gotten our kitchen stuff from the States out of storage, and I was happy to see the cheerful Fiestaware again!

For right now KE and I are sleeping on foam mattresses in the living room and using the smaller bedroom on this side as a storage room and staging ground for the move. I'm actually sleeping much better here in the living room, which really surprises me. Yesterday I put the quilt that Grannie made for me on the bed in the little bedroom and even thought the room is still a complete mess, it really made it look better:

The renters built the loft platform. The room actually has a cathedral ceiling too. Don't know when we'll get time to take it down (or put the doors on the wardrobe), but every little thing helps at this point.

Aktivitet

Okay. Didn't quite get as much done as I had thought, but not too bad over all. Got the plain picot pullover done (except for weaving in the ends, which I'll do tonight):

Not totally happy with the shaping (shoulders too loose, neck opening too wide), but it's certainly wearable. It's very warm, so it won't get much use until winter hits. Can't quite figure out the pained look on my face. I really do hate having my picture taken, so it's weird that I'm so willing to post pictures of myself on the internet.

What I've actually spend most of my time on this weekend was frogging the horrible jacket made out of lovely shetland yarn. Here's the result:

That looks like it might be enough to make a shetland sweater from Traditional Knitting Paterns of Ireland, Scotland and England, though I'll have to weigh it to be sure. The pattern is a two-color all over diamond pattern. Very pretty, and it would be subtle in these tone-on-tone heathery colors.

I picked up the guernsey for E to work on as planned, only to discover that I had only half of one arm knitted rather than one and a half arms. So, more knitting than I thought. I tried it on him just to get a better picture of the pattern:

It's way too big of course, but I do like the pattern a lot. Guernseys are very appealing. And of course E is just painfully sweet. This pattern is called "Child's Filey Guernsey" and is from the traditional knitting book. I think I'll try to finish it off before I pick up the Whisper Cardigan again.

Hverdagskost 2

Such a busy week! After my mother left Monday night both KE and I had so much work to catch up on. I spent all day Tuesday and Wednesday giving oral exams in early modern Nordic literature. It was incredibly draining for me (as one of the examiners). I can only imagine how stressful it was for the students. Thursday I had to run a ton of errands and finish reading an MA thesis for Friday. Friday I flew to Bergen (had to catch a 05:20 bus, and wasn't home until 19.35) to evaluate the thesis and participate in the oral defense. It was a fascinating experience, though incredibly draining as well. Meanwhile, KE spend all day Thursday preparing for, running, and documenting an exhibit of his work at the local high school for one of his last independent studies in Digital Art.

No knitting was done. I was reading Camilla Collett's Amtmandens Døttre for the third time on the way to and from Bergen. This time the book is really hitting home. It's so good. Right up there with Jane Austen and the Brontës. I'm delighted that I'll be able to touch on it a bit in my cabin book (Sophie is described as a "seterjente" and both of the men who are in love with her associate her with the seter).

I'm hoping to knit a lot this weekend though: I want to finish off a little sweater for Eivind that has been languishing since last summer (all that's left is half a sleeve--it's a guernsey, so the sleeve is picked up at the shoulder and knitted down, so no excuse for not finishing it now that I have the final skein of yarn for it), finish my experiment (only have the sleeve caps to knit!), and pick up the Whisper Cardigan again (finally bought the right needles). I'm thinking I may want to to a ruffle at the bottom of the sleeves (gasp) since the cast on and cast off edges are so different, both in look and tension. I need to find a way to mask that.

Did I mention that I bought a skein of Hoelfeldt Lund spelsau knitting yarn? I am swatching (don't like that word--sorry) for making another Norah Gaughan oversized guernsey for myself (in black, for the fifth time) since my mom appropriated my brown one (Ravelry link). I swear. That sweater pattern is the most successful thing I've ever knitted. Three people have demanded that I either give them my sweater off my back or knit them one! And I simply wore out the other black one that I knit using Klippan Tuna yarn from Sweden. I'm hoping that the industrial strength spelsau will last longer.

I also want to use the spelsau yarn to make Alice Starmore's Fulmar (Ravelry link) from Aran Knitting. I'm kicking myself for not photocopying the pattern when I borrowed the book last fall through interlibrary loan (a former student has promised to copy it for me now--yay!). The other two I copied (Na Craga and St. Brigid) are for aran weigh yarn, but this one is actually for fingering weight, which of course I like much better. I am thinking that for next year, I want to pick just a few really challenging patterns to work on over time, rather than rushing to finish twelve sweaters. The NaKniSweMoDo is an interesting challenge, but I wouldn't want to repeat it, I think. So maybe Fulmar, the linen lace tunic from Vogue Knitting (Ravelry link), and something stranded for the whole year (along with smaller projects of course).

Hverdagskost 1

Being too tired to knit for a few days was probably a good thing, even though it pains me not to have anything finished. My left wrist was feeling sore, and now it's better. I picked up my improvised sweater yesterday and made a little progress (divided for front and back at the armholes and knit the back).

Interweave Knits Winter 2007 has a very good article on how to design set in sleeves, so I'm doing a very slight bit of armhole shaping, just to learn the logic behind the process. It is going to be a very tight sweater, I'm afraid. What I have left to do is: finish the front, join the shoulders (I'll probably graft them, even though it's tedious), do a picot edge around the neck opening (not the most flexible, so I'm worried it won't go over my head), knit the arms a little longer and include sleeve caps, then sew in the arms. Not too bad.

I got the Volvo Lastvagnar revisions done. Took a couple of hours on Friday and yesterday, and am relatively satisfied with the result. I'm glad that I will be getting feedback at the NorLit conference in August, as I don't really have a good sense of whether the work is just totally naive and derivative, or whether I'm actually contributing something to the discussion of intermediality.

But so now my list of small (non-book) things to write is starting to clear out:

• Når vi døde vågner article (I got good information at the National Theatre archive, which I now need to integrate; not too terribly much more to go on this before I can submit it)
• Knut Hamsun conference presentation (haven't looked at it for a couple of months, not sure what state it's in, or whether I'm even going in the right direction with it)
• review of Joan Templeton's Munch's Ibsen

I really think I'm going to leave it at that for a while so that I can get going on the book this summer. Articles are just so much more fun to write, and the publication process (though still slow) is faster and more satisfying, since you get more direct feedback on your ideas.

My mom leaves tomorrow. It has been a really good visit, though probably really dull for her, since we haven't gone anywhere outside of the home base of Nesodden and Oslo. I know she wanted to go to Bergen, but that just didn't seem possible right now in the middle of exams and taking over the whole house. She did get to spend a lot of time with her grandson, which was the real point of the visit, and his English (which was starting to lapse) is coming back stronger.

Speaking of E, we dodged a bullet in terms of child care. The half-day preschool he has been going to since January really wasn't all that satisfactory, but we were sort of passively planning on continuing, just because we were too overwhelmed to research and apply for a change. But then at a parents' meeting they announced that it's on the verge of financial collapse, and almost none of the other children were planning on continuing. KE really got involved, going to a meeting with the local authorities, etc. and along the way found out that there was a lone spot in a really great preschool that is considered far away, so less attractive to people where we live. It's a whole eight minutes away by car, instead of the three minute commute to the half-day preschool. Apparently there was a family with a little girl who had priority for the spot, but they turned it down, so, thanks to KE's quick work, E got the spot! We're all going to go there tomorrow to check it out, on our way to take mom up to Gardermoen. The preschool is a former farm (småbruk), so they have a barn and an old "sveitservilla" is their main building (swoon!). I'm so excited and relieved!

Overveldet

So for some reason (maybe it's my period) I'm now feeling totally overwhelmed. The week has flown by, and a number of good things have happened, but I can't seem to get it together mentally. I had a great critique session with a colleague on Tuesday. She gave me the best possible suggestions for improving the Volvo Lastvagnar article, and in a normal week I probably would have been able to crank through the revisions by now. But since my Mom is visiting I took part of the day off on Wednesday to guide her to a weaver's studio in Oslo, where we visited for a good long while. It was really neat to see her house and studio, which she shares with her free lance sound engineer husband and children. She is a former architect who switched to textile art seven years ago. The house was a fabulous blend of old and new. I wasn't totally wild about all her work, but some of the pieces I found really intriguing.

Yesterday I had to give my first (ever) oral exam for the early literature course. I was really nervous about messing it up for some reason, but it went relatively well. The student did great, actually. I took care of a bunch of nagging errands on campus, but didn't manage to get any writing or revising done, which is a bummer. I've also not knitted at all for two days! My wrist was starting to hurt a bit, and I was literally too tired to knit last night (gasp!).

The biggest news of the week is that the sofa (ordered a full two months ago) arrived on Wednesday. It's great! I love it, and never want to have to buy another. Such a relief!

Ordning och reda

KE got revved up this morning and randomly started cleaning without even telling me, which got me cleaning too, and golly we got a lot done. One task was cleaning out the bins in the hall that are filled with winter gear. I washed everything -- machine washed the things that could be, and filled a bathtub with the handwash knitted items. They're all spread out on the lawn now drying in a most satisfying fashion:

With the fabulous summer weather I've gotten a lot of small things done: massive amounts of laundry (drying on a rack goes much faster in the sun), shifting of boxes out of the storage unit (for the first time in 3 months we can shut the door!), sorting of recycling (before it got to be too much to manage easily), and putting out bark in the flowerbeds (not quite done, but maybe this evening when it cools down I'll finish the job), for example. Feels great!

The long weekend has been productive in terms of knitting too, though not according to my original plan. I had the best intentions for starting up on the Whisper Cardigan again, but I realized after I got it out that I don't actually have the right needle for the ribbing band. I was shocked, as I really thought I had a complete set of circular needles, gathered over many years. I have to admit that I wasn't all that sad about having to stuff it back into time out. Instead, I decided to improvise a very basic pullover with some of the yarn I bought in Madison last month. I'm borrowing bits and pieces very loosely from two different aran weight patterns to make a plain picot edged pullover. So far so good. I'm of course anxious that I'll run out of yarn. Here's how far it's come in 3 days of knitting (gotta love aran weight stockinette!):

I wonder about whether I should have made set-in sleeves instead of the dropped shoulders I'm planning. If I have anything left over after finishing the body and the neck, I may still do it. My plan is to make a picot edge around the neck opening too. I'll knit in the round up to the armhole openings, then separate front and back. I'm doing the waist shaping from the Hourglass Sweater to make it a little less boxy. It's been years since I designed my own pattern, though I used to do it all the time in high school. I don't know why I stopped, or why I suddenly decided to try it again. It seems like a reasonable risk with such a quick knit. I probably wouldn't be as willing with a fingering weight project.