O jul med din glede...

This last week three internationally known figures died, Christopher Hitchens, Vaclav Havel, and Kim Jong-Il. Clearly the side of reason of humanity lost in the balance, if you're counting such things. This article by Hitchens on Kim Jong-Il from Slate last year is a nice commentary on both men. To get a sense of Hitchens' strength as a public speaker, check out his no-holds-barred comparison of Christian theology with North Korean totalitarianism here.

In this season of more people--both known and unknown--dying than I like to think about, it is comforting to be preparing for Christmas with a very eager 7-year-old in the house. Last year I figured out that waiting until Christmas Eve to put the tree up (the Norwegian way) just didn't cut it with me. I didn't feel like Christmas was even here before it was over. I missed having a pile of presents to admire. It made no sense to put up the tree in a rush on a day otherwise filled with cooking and socializing. So I insisted that we put the tree up a week before Christmas this year, and I'm so glad we did! There was a little tree growing in an unfortunate spot in our yard, so KE cut it down, and E and I decorated it yesterday. Here's the result:

Probably not everyone's cup of tea, but we like it. It's great to have a small tree, since then we only use a few of our most beloved ornaments, and don't feel the need to fill in with mass-produced stuff. There are ornaments (and crazy plastic icicles!) from my Dad's childhood and paper heart baskets made by KE's mother, who died in 1970. E got really into it, and was thrilled to see a small pile of packages. He was particularly intrigued by the gift labels, and upset that the biggest package didn't have one. Being a take-charge kind of kid, he quickly took matters into his own hands:

That says "FRA MAMA ÅG PAPPA TIL EIVIND HILSEN MAMA ÅG PAPPA" (roughly translated: "from mom an dad to Eivind from mom an dad"). I love watching him grapple with language!

Today I finished up the last task of grading, and did the last bit of gift shopping. I'll do a little work tomorrow and Wednesday while E is in school, but otherwise I'm going to go into vacation mode. I've been doing a little desultory knitting with the Peer Gynt yarn my colleague gave me. My dying experiment was in one sense a failure (I didn't get blue or purple), but in one sense okay, since I'm always happy to have black yarn. I decided to start making a traditional Norwegian Fana pullover for E with it. I've gotten to just below the star pattern on the body:

That should look pretty good on a red-headed kid. I'm not really aiming to finish this by Christmas, though theoretically speaking I think I could. My main focus now is just to relax and get my head readjusted before the new term starts. I'll be having a totally different type of semester, with virtually no teaching (only about four guest lectures plus a couple of conference presentations). It's going to be all about a job application and finishing my cabin book manuscript.

Not sure how much I'll be posting, so have a very jolly Christmas and enjoy the solstice! For those of us up here in the far north, it's wonderful to think that after Thursday the days will be getting longer again. Now if only we would get proper snow...

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.