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!