Rips

It's red current season here in Norway! It is always a joy to see these cheery, sour little berries hiding coyly under the leaves:

To celebrate, I made a batch of scones using the recipe from a blog called Kitchen Sketches, which is maintained by another American expat living in Europe. The scones turned out great, and I really recommend the recipe. I had a hard time getting a picture since they kept getting gobbled up:

I had to be quite firm with my family so as to be able to take this snapshot! I wasn't sure they'd work, as I didn't use fresh berries. Instead, I took a cup of the leftovers from making a small batch of red current jelly. But even with all the juice drained out of them, these eviscerated berries still tasted juicy and flavorful in the scones.

The jelly itself is so pretty that I had to put it in a cut glass jelly bowl:

Not sure that it turned out as well as last year, as I think I may have over cooked it. Can you over cook jelly? The drips off the spoon didn't look at all like the picture in my cookbook, but eventually, after about 45 minutes I just decided that it simply had to be done, no matter how it dripped, and indeed it seems to be setting up nicely. With such a small amount (4 cups of berries makes 2 cups of juice which ends up being about a cup and a half of jelly), we're just going to use it fresh and not bother with canning. Since I didn't have a jelly strainer, I decided to make one yesterday. Neither KE nor my Mom thought it was going to work, but both grudgingly admitted that my improvised frame and strainer ended up doing the trick. I felt totally vindicated about my simple design:

It's something that I'll probably only use one day a year, but even so it's nice to have a piece of equipment that does the job right.

With my Mom visiting this week there's been lots of opportunity to sit and chat and knit, so I've made a lot of progress on the Bulgarian Pleated Skirt. There are only about 2 centimeters to go before binding off, but I can't resist putting up a photo to show the progress:

Such a clever pattern. It's been a gas to knit, and I think it will be great to wear this fall with wool tights, a wool sweater, and tall boots. I just wish I could capture the color, since the green is so much richer than this.

Terror

I'm very shaken and disturbed by the terrorist acts perpetrated here in Norway yesterday, still trying to digest what has happened: The center of government was bombed, and over 80 teenagers and young adults at a Labor party summer camp were hunted down and killed by a man dressed in a police uniform while they tried to run, hide, or swim to safety. The alleged perpetrator--a 32 year old white male--has been arrested and charged. He appears to have been acting alone. Based on Internet forum posts at www.document.no he appears to have resented the new, "multicultural" Norway, though there's no way to know his exact motivations for these crimes.

We heard the bomb go off at around 3:25pm. KE and I were sitting together at the kitchen table and felt the house shake. We thought at first that someone in the neighborhood was using dynamite to blast a foundation in the bedrock, but there was no warning beeping, and the explosion lasted too long. I had been only a couple blocks from the site at 2:00pm, shopping with a friend.

Impulsiv

Usually I'm pretty monogamous when it comes to knitting. I don't like to start new projects when I have one going, and I've really been enjoying working on the Still Light tunic. So why is it, then, that I rather sheepishly have to report that I cast on for a totally new project today?

I've been thinking a lot about both dresses and skirts, and there are many fun patterns on Ravelry. While browsing around I came across something called "Bulgarian knitted skirt"; it's a free Japanese pattern blogged here, though thankfully someone on Ravelry was generous enough to translate it to English. Not quite sure why this is considered Bulgarian? At any rate, it's a fabulously simple A-line pleated skirt knitted in fingering weight yarn--perfect for some of that yarn I bought in Denmark last summer. Somehow I can't feel guilty about wantonly casting on something new when it's yarn that I have on hand. Much better than ordering new yarn, which I confess I've been a little tempted to do recently.

Here's what the start looks like:

(The color should be greener than this. Couldn't adjust it to save my life.)  There's a hem (about 3/4 inch) at the top for an elastic waistband. Then you start in on 1x1 rib for 12 cm, followed by an increase row, followed by 2x2 ribbing, then another increase row followed by 3x3 ribbing, then finally another increase row followed by a section of 4x4 ribbing. No counting, no thinking, just acres and acres of ribbing.  So addicting.

I don't think I ever posted a picture of the needle holder ("nålhus") that I bought a few months ago for my darning needles. It has to be one of my all-time favorite purchases:

If you are a knitter with a bunch of darning needles stashed away in various places, but you can never find one, you really, really need one of these. I got mine at Husfliden in Oslo for about 65 kroner. Well worth it!

We worked inside this morning for a couple of reasons. E woke up vomiting again (poor guy!!! We're really stumped as to why he's had such stomach trouble this summer), and it was pouring rain. I started out by putting up shelving in our storage room ("bod"), and then later in the day KE took apart more of the kitchen in our bedroom (!) in preparation for installing closets (yes, we have no closets). Here's a shot of the "bod" (though I warn you, it's not much to look at):

The shelves to the right and the drawer unit are part of the former kitchen. Now we just have to organize all the stuff that will be going back in!

My Mom arrives at the end of the week for a short visit and we're all really excited to see her. It would be great if we can get some of these indoor projects taken care of by the time she gets here, though that may be overly ambitious.

Rolig

We've continued to have lovely weather, and are into a really nice family "staycation" groove now. E has really mellowed out and has been such a delight to be with for weeks and weeks now. He's so much more able to get absorbed in playing on his own than ever before--he's acting more like the classic only child who is able to entertain himself, and when we're interacting with him there are far fewer tantrums and power battles. He's such a neat kid!

Today we took a break from painting and staining projects. While the boys went to the beach, I stayed in the shade (3-day headache...) and re-read Sherman Alexie's Indian Killer, which I liked even better the second time through. I really recommend it. I picked it up again because over the past few days I've been fixating on, of all things, serial killers in the Pacific Northwest. It kind of hit me the other day that my entire childhood was affected by a low level background of the violent torture, rape, abuse, and murder of young women at the hands of men like Ted Bundy, Randy Woodfield, and Gary Rigdway. I started compiling dates of activity and names (mostly from this old article from the Seattle PI), and counting Oregon and British Columbia, there were almost forty serial killers (depending on how you define the term) operative in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s in the Northwest. It's so weird, especially since otherwise the murder rate in the region is noticably lower than other places, apparently. This article attempts to determine whether there really are more serial killers in the Northwest per capita, and if so why. Nothing conclusive, of course. This is actually something I think I want to write about in some capacity...

On a more wholesome (or at least domestic) note, I made vegetable soup earlier today, and right now I have a basic yellow cake in the oven. I went with a recipe from Bakerella's website (I think she and her "cake pops" are something of an internet phenom, but it was the first time I've actually looked at the site).


I have some before and after shots of our front door, which has changed fairly dramatically through the magic of paint. Before:

(Sanded, so even shabbier than it usually looked, and taped). Most of the royal blue door and ochre trim is overexposed, so you only get the true look of the color combination at the top of the door.  And then after:

Same house color (it just looks really different with different lighting), but now with a periwinkle or cornflower blue door, and white trim. At first KE hated the lighter blue, but I think it's growing on him. 

Still knitting away on Still Light. It's a great mindless summer project. I also ordered a color card of Istex Létt-Lopi and the pattern for Kedja from a Norwegian supplier called Birgirsdottir. Very happy with the quick service, and enamored with the fabulous color selection. It will be hard to decide on the colors for my tunic!

Tunika

Little bit of progress to report on the Still Light Tunic:

I finally made it past the yoke raglan increases last night! It is such a relief now to have 5 full centemeters of knitting with no increases. Surely I can't mess that up?

The tunic thing really has me hooked! I am contemplating knitting two more sweater dresses this summer and fall. One is a dress called Kedja (that "d" should be an "eth") made out of Istex Léttlopi. I've seen a really fantastic version of this on Ravelry done in a really soft brown (a sand or dun color) with natural for the contrast color. It looks great when the contrast is less stark. The other is so heavily modified in my mind that there's really no point in posting a link.

Rusten

The delphiniums are just past their prime, but still a spectacular blast of color in the yard:

 

We've been trying to adjust to vacation mode, which in our family always seems to entail a few temper tantrums (from all) before we can settle down and relax. We have no plans to travel, and are just going to try to regroup and catch up on everything that needs doing around here. First on the list is staining the garage. We got started yesterday on the primer, but ran out of the stuff (we started with 10 liters!) before we could finish the upper part:

It looks kind of nice with just the primer on, actually. It looks a little like the whitewash on the interior walls of our house. Unfortunately we can't do any work outside today because it's raining on and off. I think we're all a little stir crazy, trying to fill the time.

The other day I bought a liter of kefir for no good reason, and as it had already expired, I decided I really needed to make something out of it before it's too late. After poking around a bit I came up on this recipe for "Fluffy Kefir Pancakes" on a blog. Boy were they yummy!

With vacation time, I'm finally getting back into knitting. I had been plugging away on a cabled pullover in a charcoal gray alpaca yarn, but the color was just too dark to do credit to the cables, and the hard work just didn't seem to be paying off. So in typical fashion, I decided to rip out the two almost finished sleeves...

... and start over with something new. What I decided upon is the very popular "Still Light Tunic" designed by Veera Välimäki. It has a lot of features I like, in particular the fact that it has a top down raglan construction. I must be incredibly rusty, though, because I have had the darndest time making it through the yoke. I have already started twice, and have had to count and count and count, and rip and rip and rip. Here's what the back of my pattern looks like:

 That's never a good sign. Here are the two attempts. It's painful to see how far I got on the first one (on the left) before I stopped to count stitches:

It really shouldn't be that hard! I did notice that for the numbers to add up, the back part has to have two stitches fewer than the front part. I think that may have been the source of my initial confusion, since it isn't mentioned in the pattern.

I never did seem to get around to posting a picture of my iPad and wireless keyboard set up. Here's what it looks like:

 

I'm really happy with it, especially the keyboard. It makes a huge difference in how useable the iPad is. I've already started trying to scroll with my finger on the screen of my laptop after just a few weeks of iPad use! Unfortunately, I found out that there was a big game sale online, and Sims 3, which I've been thinking I wanted to try for ages, was on sale for a buck. Needless to say, I've become totally addicted in only a few days. Here's hoping I get over it fairly quickly (the iPad version is a lot more limited than the full game, apparently). 

Trosbekjennelse

I took the belief-o-matic quiz and got the following results:
 

 

The top score on the list below represents the faith that Belief-O-Matic, in its less than infinite wisdom, thinks most closely matches your beliefs. However, even a score of 100% does not mean that your views are all shared by this faith, or vice versa.
Belief-O-Matic then lists another 26 faiths in order of how much they have in common with your professed beliefs. The higher a faith appears on this list, the more closely it aligns with your thinking.

1.	Secular Humanism (100%)
2.	Unitarian Universalism (96%)
3.	Theravada Buddhism (92%)
4.	Liberal Quakers (84%)
5.	Nontheist (79%)
6.	Taoism (72%)
7.	Neo-Pagan (60%)
8.	Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (59%)
9.	Mahayana Buddhism (57%)
10.	Orthodox Quaker (49%)
11.	Jainism (48%)
12.	New Age (43%)
13.	Sikhism (37%)
14.	Hinduism (36%)
15.	Reform Judaism (35%)
16.	Baha'i Faith (30%)
17.	Seventh Day Adventist (27%)
18.	Scientology (21%)
19.	New Thought (20%)
20.	Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (17%)
21.	Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (15%)
22.	Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (13%)
23.	Eastern Orthodox (10%)
24.	Islam (10%)
25.	Orthodox Judaism (10%)
26.	Roman Catholic (10%)
27.	Jehovah's Witness (7%)

As far as I'm concerned, every thing after number six is pure conincidence or a factor of living in the same general culture.