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.