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.