London, Loop, og Liberty

Golly. I hardly know where to begin after having spent a very intense week in London and Edinburgh. I was there for work as a visiting professor, which I'll write about on my academic blog later if I can gather my thoughts on the experience. And I think I'm going to have to break up the shopping and crafting updates into separate posts here too, since there's just so much!

I had a lot of work to do while I was there, and my hosts had planned a lot of really fun activities for me, so there wasn't a huge amount of time for being a tourist. I've also been in both cities before and seen all the major sites, so this time I used small, independent yarn shops as my guide for exploring. I went to two shops in London and one in Edinburgh, and also stopped off in the yarn departments of quite a few of the major department stores, so I feel like I got a pretty good overview of what's available.

My first stop was Loop in Islington, which also turned out to be my favorite of the shops. I really liked the neighborhood, which was in walking distance of University College London where I was based.

This is pretty much the perfect yarn shop. It's small, but has two floors filled with lovely yarns and it has a quirky vibe rather than the overly sweet pseudo-country style one often finds at such places. For some reason, I usually just ignore the sample knits in most stores, but the ones here (mostly lace shawls) were exquisite. My goal had been to buy some British yarn and to maybe find some buttons to replace the ugly ones on my Plain and Simple Pullover. Loop had both. They specialize in antique buttons and some of them are totally amazing (and spendy). Here's what I ended up with:

The yarn is Juno "Alice Sock," which is a fingering weight silk-alpaca-cashmere blend made in the UK. The color is called "Shadow Cave," and there's just enough to make some kind of simple shawl. I'm thinking maybe of making Henslowe (Ravelry link here). I even got a cloth bag to go along with the purchase.

Later that same day I stopped in at the Liberty department store, and couldn't resist buying some Liberty Tana Lawn. The idea is to make hankies, but I may just admire it instead. They were selling a packet of three hankies there for something like thirteen pounds, and I got enough to make eight hankies for twelve. The pattern is called "Lillian's Berries," I think. The yarn department there was almost entirely Rowan, which for some reason didn't appeal to me at all (Then. More on Rowan yarns in a later post...).

Dumme meg...

So back on Thursday I think it was, I was going to post a blog about the Graystone Tunic, which had been going great guns. I was racing through it, even though I had a sneaking suspicion that the size L was a bit big. I took a snapshot of my progress:

"Gosh, does that look big," I thought to myself. "Better try it on." And so I did:

Whoa! It was HUGE. Gargantuan. Colossal, even. And yes, that's right, I managed to mess up the ostensibly failproof garter stitch project. Not my finest hour as a knitter. To make matters worse, you can see that I very cleverly knit the sleeves before going on to the body, "to save time." So not only did I have to rip back four sets of increases, I also had to rip out two perfectly serviceable arms. I suppose you could say that's a negative about top-down knitting, except that it was totally avoidable had I just paid more attention and tried it on at an earlier stage.

Even though I'm knitting under a self-imposed deadline I was too demoralized to knit for a day or so, but now I've caught up (in the afternoon on Sunday, thanks to a full docket of winter sports on NRK today...) and am almost back to where I was when I started frogging:

I have tried it on, and it the fit is perfectly acceptable. And the good news is, it's quite flattering and just what I was hoping for. Phew. Now it's a mad dash to the bottom, with only a little waist shaping along the way. I will wear this tunic to at least one of my presentations in the UK next week, even if it kills me. (And yes, I should probably be worrying more about the presentations themselves than what I'll be wearing...)

Hvordan oppdra en nordmann

Every once in a while the cultural differences between me (a Pacific Northwesterner) and my husband (a Norwegian) become glaringly apparent. Take today, for example. Yes, the sun is shining. But that doesn't mitigate the fact that it is -15 celsius (that's a mere 3 degrees Farenheit). So what does a rational person do? I vote for sitting inside wrapped in woolens and knitting with a fire in the wood stove. KE on the other hand thinks this is a perfect day to be outside with E, skiing in the yard (that's still rational) and sitting in the sun. As in sitting still. In frigid temperatures. The man is insane, and so too, I'm afraid, is the boy. Here's proof:

Funny thing is, they actually seem to be enjoying themselves. All I can say is "cultural difference"!

Meanwhile, I'm progressing on Graystone. I've made it though the gargantuan cowl neck, and am about halfway through the raglan shaping:

As far as I can tell I haven't screwed anything up yet. I'm really curious how that over the shoulder cowl is going to look on me, and whether my neck will get cold... I'm also a little concerned about how that visible seam at the round join is going to look on the finished garment. I didn't think about that when I decided not to make the diagonal cable. I'm not sure if that seam would have followed along with the cable or not (I think not), and all the versions of this sweater that I've seen have been so dark that the seam wasn't visible. Time will tell, of course.

I also have really spectacular news to report: as of Thursday, I now have permanent residency in Norway! I got the notice earlier this week, and took the train from Oslo down to Ski (the administrative center for where I live), and got the permit added to my passport. In the end, after all that strife about language competency, it was totally painless. I can't even begin to explain what a relief this is! It means no matter what happens (barring ridiculous criminal behavior on my part, I suppose) the state can't separate me from my kid. I won't get deported. I can lead a normal life here (almost) just like anyone else. I think I'll even start being able to vote in local elections, which will be great, since I've always been such a firm believer in participating in the political process.