Disiplin og tukt

Brrr! It's icy cold here in Norway. You can tell that it's really cold because even the tough guys at my bus stop in the mornings have hats on. Despite the cold, and despite coming down with a sore throat, I made it through two days of the three-day Bjørnson conference this week. My own paper on Thursday went really well, though I was unexpectedly gripped by nerves, and stumbled a lot over my words in the beginning. Really, I should have know it would be well received, given the fact that I devoted way too much time to revising it.

The next day one of the nestors in the field gave a paper on the same text (Synnøve Solbakken) and he explicitly praised my paper from the previous day in his presentation. I was kind of blown away, to put it mildly. Of course he had two points to criticize, but that is actually the best thing about being engaged in that way. One of the points was something I definitely overlooked, but the other was a point of interpretation, and we had a nice little chat afterward discussing our differing interpretations of the passage (Synnøve's dream sequence in chapter six, in case anyone's interested).

Having given a good paper made it easier for me to focus on the social networking that I really need to do. I put myself out there more than I usually do, and had four or five interesting conversations with people I don't know all that well or had never met before. And to top it all off, my friend S rather unexpectedly invited me to participate in a brainstorming seminar he's arranging this week. It's quite an honor to be invited, and it will give me another chance to network with people who may be in the position to hire (or not hire) me for a permanent position in the next few years. I'm very grateful and excited!

My mom sent us a package, mostly for E's birthday, but it also contained some yarn that she picked up for five dollars at a garage sale. It's about 1100 yards of worsted weight two-ply New Zealand wool in a beautiful brown-gray color:

When she first told me about it I initially thought I would use it to make a matching scarf, hat and mittens, but now that I see how much there is, I'm thinking I need to make some kind of garment instead. This is a color I've been eyeing appreciatively in various contexts, so I'm thrilled to have some to work with. ETA: I'm thinking Cathy Payson's Placed Cable Aran would be a good choice, if only I had the Fall 2007 issue of Interweave Knits. I've put out a request on the book and magazine swap group on Ravelry...

I'm trying to be disciplined, however, and finish up the Riborama pullover. Once I finally got the second sleeve done, the body has (as anticipated) gone much faster. I'm down to the waist, and I'm just going to keep going until I run out of yarn. I've done some slight waist shaping, and I think I may continue some gentle increasing over the hips to make it kind of an a-line tunic. Here's a shot:

The color is way off. It's really hard to take good pictures these days, since the light is so low even at ten o'clock in the morning. The green is much more intense that in the photograph.

I've been participating in an academic writing group on Ravelry for the month of November. We all stated our research/writing goals for the month, and have been posting daily updates (most people petered out after about seven days, unfortunately). I've found that quite helpful, and it has certainly encouraged me to squeeze in even a tiny bit of book-related work on days when I otherwise wouldn't have done so. The potential shame of having nothing to post is a very motivating factor for me!

So even with the Bjørnson conference craziness, I did some planning for the book on Thursday, and a tiny bit of writing yesterday and this morning (about 500 words). I am now about thirty pages short of my goal of 170 pages, and most of that is spread out among the various chapters. There are a bunch small sections I want to add throughout, so it was helpful to write up a list of those missing bits. Some of them are the hard parts that I've been avoiding, others are new material that I haven't yet fully processed. I was feeling overwhelmed -- like, how do I even get started on these last thirty pages after my two week fling with my conference paper?! -- but now I'm more on track. I started this weekend with the easiest of the new sections, and even though it's not very good, at least I have written something. I have had such fun and flow with this project that it's only to be expected that it would get hard at some point.

Interior link of the week: The Swedish furniture design firm G.A.D. They have some lovely, minimalist/modernist furniture made with materials from the island of Gotland. It's very puritanical furniture, which suits my current ascetic mood.

Småplukk

This past week has been filled with many small projects. It's fun to finally have some finished objects to show, but I am a bit bummed that I'm not getting anywhere with any larger projects. I think my knitting is definitely in a lackluster period this fall. I'm hoping that's because I'm channeling my creative energy into the Peer Gynt book instead. So, with apologies for being really boring, here are three finished objects:

First out is four crocheted washcloths/dishrags from Tove Fevang's Helt enkel hekling:

These were crocheted in a mad dash to get something together for E's school's Christmas Market (which was yesterday). I had originally hoped that the three of us could make tie dyed t-shirts together as a family project, but it turned out that the materials were just outrageously expensive here in Norway. I don't mind spending money to support the school, but this would have probably been about $75 for the supplies, and I just couldn't bring myself to pay that much. I'm happy with the substitute project: I learned how to crochet a piqué edge (easy!) and used up the rest of the yarn left over from a thrift store harvest. I really like Tove Fevang's patterns from this book, and it was a good reminder that there are still lots of things I'd like to make from it.

Next up was a pair of fingerless mitts that I knitted for myself:

I used the Rauma Inca alpakkagarn that I bought last year for something else that didn't end up working out. The pattern is from a Rauma Design pamphlet called Alpakka 1. It's supposed to be striped, but I just wanted something plain and simple to wear when I'm typing in my campus office. Although most public buildings are overheated in Norway, for some reason my office gets really chilly. It will be nice to have these at hand when my hands get cold and stiff.

The last thing I finished this week was a gift for my official mentor:

I didn't dare make anything other than the plainest of manly toques for him. I used Marks & Kattens Eco Ull for the first time. It's a single ply Aran weight yarn, and I must say I liked it a lot. I ended up using just a tiny bit of the third ball I bought, which is always a little irritating. I'm now wondering what I can use it for. The pattern is Cheryl Niamath's Zissou, which I've knit twice before (both for KE).

I had been hoping that I could report that I was finished with the second arm of the Rib-o-rama pullover too, but I'm not quite there yet. I should finish it by the end of today, though, and then start picking up the stitches for the body. I can't believe how slowly that project has been going, even when I do actually pick it up and knit on it.

Brodder

That's it! Today, November fifteenth was the day that I broke out my brodder, which is to say strap on spikes for my shoes. We had a centimeter of snow and the temperature is vacillating between freezing and thawing, so there's slippery ice all over the place. Sigh. It will be like this for the next four months.

I got my Bjørnson conference paper more or less done today, which is a big positive. I still need KE to proofread it, and I really should do a bunch more research for it, but I just don't have time. I so need to get back to work on the Peer Gynt book. I did my mid-month tally today, and I'm way behind schedule.

I also survived and actually really enjoyed our early Thanksgiving dinner for ten on Saturday. I spent two days cooking and I think I finally have the menu nailed. I even consolidated all the recipes from various sources into one document, complete with metric conversions and a shopping checklist. So I guess I'll be really ready for Thanksgiving in years to come.

No interesting knitting to speak of. I'm working on a very simple pair of fingerless mitts for office wear, and finished the first one last night, but it's too dark to take any pictures now. It's so plain that I may have to add some kind of decorative crochet edge to it. We'll see...

Litt vaklende

Found a new favorite small house: the so-called "Friggebod" from Sweden: apparently as of 2008 you can build a dwelling of up to 15 square meters without a permit, so there are a lot of cool designs for them now. There's a company producing elegant little upscale prefabs. And there's also a Norwegian company producing a series of small, high-quality prefabs. Their Blåtann series (named after the Viking king Harald) is very modern and elegant as well.

At work today I had a nice meeting with a colleague from ILOS, got a bunch of Synnøve Solbakken secondary literature, and watched the Peer Gynt in Cairo production from 2006 as broadcast by NRK on New Year's Eve of that year. Really interesting. I recently read three absolute hatchet job analyses of the performance (by Helland, Helland again, and then by Rem), and I have to say I agree with most (though thankfully not all) of what they say. I also added about a half a page to my conference paper, so it was an okay day, though I've had a headache for most of it. Not sleeping well, but family life is much more harmonious than earlier this week.

So now it's time to gear up for an early Thanksgiving dinner this Saturday. We have commitments the next two weekends, so we have to do it early or else it conflicts with December madness (E's birthday, final exams, and Christmas...). I'm already feeling enervated just thinking about the holidays...

I started knitting some fingerless mitts since my office is kind of chilly. More stash yarn.

Skepsis

Yesterday morning (before our big blow out) E asked me to knit some clothes for his bear. It's the first time he's asked for anything like this, and I was more than happy to comply. I think his lopsided face kind of expresses how I'm feeling too. Hopeful but worried and wary, and a little gun shy. Nothing I try seems to be working. I can kind of feel the attraction of just giving up, but there's just too much at risk. I would so hate for all the sacrifices and work we've done to just disintegrate into nothing.

E has a cough and a snotty nose today, so I'm staying home with him. When KE gets home I'll head into town to go to the National Library to look at Arne Øverland's 1970 comic strip version of Peer Gynt. I'm very curious about it. If I have the time and energy I'll go to campus too to try to get more work done.

Other than the bearwear, I did finally pick up Rib-o-rama again, and am now closing in on finished a corrected version of the second arm. Then I just have to knit knit knit until I run out of yarn on the body. That should be fun!

...og ut av balanse igjen...

Just when I think things are back on track my life explodes again.  Confused. Sad. Scared. Nothing I can blog about.

I balanse

KE and I fell back in step this week. I actually think it helped just to acknowledge openly how far apart we are on some issues (relating to our interpersonal communication and expectations about our life together). Certainly the theme for the rest of our week has been how much we have in common and how much we really enjoy each other as people. We just had a fabulously interesting conversation that managed to encompass some of my thoughts about the Peer Gynt book and KE's thoughts about becoming an art teacher. The conversation was so good that I had to take notes afterwards! So, yay for us, we really are a good couple after all, despite driving each other crazy at times.

I got to spend today at home writing. I managed four pages (about 1000 words): two additional pages for the theoretical introduction and two pages' worth of additions to chapters four and five. In the introduction I'm trying to write about "cultural appropriation" and adaptation. I can really feel the project coming together (despite lots of holes and problem areas), which is just so darned exciting. It's a good sign (or not, depending on how you look at it and why you read this blog) when my work is more interesting and fun than my knitting!

To artikler

Earlier this year I submitted two articles to the main American scholarly journal in my field. One of them, the Frobenius article, had been rejected by a Norwegian journal previously, the other, the one on children's novels by Aanrud and M. Hamsun, was "fresh" as it were. I've just heard back on the second one, and I'm gobsmacked: both have been accepted for publication without revisions. Anyone who is a professional academic knows that only vary rarely do things get accepted without a laundry list of revisions suggested by the two anonymous peer reviewers that read each manuscript. Often times the two reviewers have vastly different visions of what needs to be changed, and sometimes one recommends rejection while the second thinks the work is brilliant. It can be a maddening process. It usually means a long and difficult round of revision. It can be really hard (not to mention demoralizing and even humiliating) to change fundamental things about the analysis that one has worked so hard to construct, and sometimes the reviewer comments can be mean spirited and petty.

I am so incredibly relieved to have had not one but two pieces of recent work make it through the process intact. For one thing, it means a lot less work for me, but beyond that it means that my work appears to be viewed as of very high quality, and that feels fantastic. I think a lot of the credit has to go to my friend L, who critiqued both drafts before I sent them out. She always has good insights and asks all the right questions that challenge me on all the right issues.

We're struggling (as usual?) here at home. Had a tough discussion with KE last night. Sometimes it feels like we just don't understand each other at all. E is doing fine, but I think he caught a cold on Halloween. He went to his friend S's house for a party and for trick-or-treating, and somehow he managed to go out without a coat. I would have never let that happen. Last night he was froggy so I'm preparing myself for staying home with him today if need be.