Knall!

Wow, this spring weekend has been totally amazing. We've had glorious sun and temperatures around 15 celsius, which means we've been outside practically the entire time. Fabulous!

I finished the Porticus pullover. It fits perfectly, and I was able to block it outside on the patio!

I love it. It got a little hairy there right at the end, as I was knitting the last sleeve. I ended up with no more than 20 centimeters of yarn left over. Talk about maximizing one's resources!

My sister-in-law stopped by for a visit, so I baked an apple cake using the recipe from Smitten Kitchen. I discovered after I started that I was short a couple of eggs and some vegetable oil, so I had to improvise. Even so, it turned out delish.

At the request of KE I cut way back on the sugar (one cup instead of two) and was assured that it tasted just like a Norwegian (read: better than American) apple cake. Go figure! I'll definitely be making this one again.

Småting

There's lots going on here on the home front, and even some finished objects to report. On Thursday I had to bake cookies for E's school "Lantern Festival"; the recipe they distributed didn't appeal, so I searched the internet and came up with this Martha Stewart recipe for basic sugar cookies. They were so good that I had to make a batch for us here at home today too:

The only change I made in the recipe was  to add a little bit of fresh lemon juice, since the school recipe had called for that. They turned out delicious even without any icing or decoration. These will be gone very soon, I fear.

Since abandoning my big sweater projects, I've been doing much better with knitting. I finished up the cashmere "Lava Flow" cowl, and have been wearing it almost constantly since:

It has been an especially welcome addition since I seem to have developed my annual winter neck crick already. I used just under three skeins of Classic Elite Marley (100% cashmere), and modified the pattern (a free Ravelry download called Lava Flow Cowl) by adding a third cable repeat, and by making it long enough to double the cowl around my neck. This makes it big and bulky, like the women in Oslo seem to always wear them. The other day walking from the subway to the ferry I tried to tally how many women wore cowls or scarves of some kind compared with women who didn't. I lost track, but it was something like seven with for every one without!

Each year I attempt to knit a new winter hat that will work, and each year I fail. Here's this winter's first attempt, the "Rikke" hat (free pattern here):

I suspect that this one won't end up being exactly "it" either, but for now I think it will work. I used just under two balls of Rauma 3-tråd strikkegarn, and followed the pattern exactly.

Otherwise, I've dug out a disastrous project from this summer, and have decided to finish up the crocheted border so that I can donate the thing to E's school's Christmas bazaar. I know I'll never wear it, but it sort of has that Waldorf school aesthetic, so maybe someone will buy it in support of the school?

See, cute in a way, but totally not my thing. I can't stand pink, or fuzzy yarn, or cardigans, or things that are tight (which this definitely would be on me), but I was just so taken in the picture from Tine Solheim's book Maskeball, and the yarn I had been given was a perfect match for it, and so I just went for it...

Just a few more inches of crocheting the ruffled edge, and it will be done well in time for the Christmas market next weekend. And now, after finally getting some wearable (or donate-able) finished objects under my belt, I think I'll be able to pick up my two big knitting projects (the Still Light Tunic and the Ung Høst pullover) and maybe even get them finished by the end of the term...

Høstlig helg

Yesterday was a beautiful fall day. While I was inside reading, KE and E got it into their heads to have a bonfire in the yard and grill pinnebrød, which I've never had before. E came running in to ask me to make some dough, so I quickly found a recipe on the internet and whipped some up. It's basically like biscuits, but a lot more elastic and smooth. I recognize it from classic American "pigs in a blanket" but that wasn't something I grew up eating or making myself, so this was an adventure for me. I also didn't know it was common to just grill the bread without wrapping it around a hotdog.

Still working on the "Ung vår" sweater, and making decent progress. Last night I reached the point in the body where I'm going to attach the sleeves:

There's cabling every fourth row, which I seem to mess up with remarkable frequency. Since it's black, I'm letting the mistakes slide. The point is to get this done quickly so I have something to wear.

Today I'm off to see a Danish movie in Oslo with a Danish friend. Should be fun.

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.

Hurra for meg

Yesterday was my birthday, and it was a very mellow, very nice day. First off the sun was shining, for which there is certainly no guarantee in Norway in September. I woke up early and was excited to bang out my thoughts on my new book plan. On Friday I had a major conceptual breakthrough. I realized that I have another book gestating that is not the cabin book. This other book, which is on Ibsen's Peer Gynt and the production of meaning, is begging to be written. I have a strong feeling that I can get it done by December of this year. The cabin book just isn't coming together, and I think it needs more time to percolate in the background. So now I have a chapter outline for the new book and I've gathered together all the related work I've done on Peer Gynt (which turns out to be a lot) and apportioned it out into the right chapters. I have over 70 pages and a very clear plan for the rest now. That was a great way to start my day. How exciting to discover that I have nearly half of a book written!

Once the guys were up and running we drove down to the local Kiwanis Club barn sale and I scored in a big way! You have to understand that I am a real tightwad, I hate being parted from my kroner, and that I live in a country with ridiculously high taxes on consumer goods. Things that would cost $2 in the US sell for closer to $20 here. This makes furnishing a home a difficult challenge. I have been looking for a table cloth that fits on our very wide table when it is fully extended since at least Thanksgiving time last year. There is just nothing out there, but in the stacks of linens upstairs in the Kiwanis barn I found one, and not only is it big, but also new and clean and really nice: 100% cotton in lovely, deep blues from Habitat that will work with our colorful Fiestaware dishes.

I have also been looking for a pepper mill since we moved here in December 2008. I see them in stores all the time, but I am just not going to pay $40 dollars for a freaking pepper mill. The fabulous Kiwanis had three to choose from. I took the least garish and gunky one. It had an irritating label stuck on, but after soaking the mill in hot soapy water for 15 minutes it scrubbed off like a dream, and now I have a sparkly little pepper mill:

KE thinks it's hideously ugly, but clearly he's just plain wrong about that! How can someone who barely ever uses pepper be expected to appreciate the glory that this is?  I paid 30 NOK for both the table cloth and the pepper mill -- just under $5 right now. Now that's a price I can live with, and it was the best birthday present I've had in I think five years! Okay, so I'm easily amused and "billig i drift" (cheap to maintain) as they say here in Norway.

We went grocery shopping (thankfully painless) and then I baked myself a cake and made pizza on a gloriously sunny afternoon in our kitchen, with the door to the patio wide open. After the pizza we took a walk around the neighborhood. We were feeling bold, so we scoped out the yard of the abandoned house that we desperately want to buy. That only made us want it more, so on the way home we were scheming and trying to figure out how to make that work. I know it's possible to find out who owns a particular property, and I'd like to contact the owners, but we have a lot of financial stuff to work out, and plus we need at least one of us to have a permanent position. It is totally my dream--an old house on the verge of collapse--combined with KE's dream--perfect solforhold (a quintessentially Norwegian word that I don't think has an English equivalent. It means "sun conditions"--meaning how early the sun shines on the property in the morning and how late in the evening at all times of the year. Norwegian are--quite justifiably--obsessed with solforhold) and a little bit of a view of the fjord. Sigh. Want want want want want. I would be willing to sacrifice a lot to buy that house. Since we can't do it, we went home and consoled ourselves with birthday cake.

It was the same cake I baked last Saturday for KE's birthday (yes, we're exactly seven days apart, born in the same year). Last weekend I tried out the ginormous stand mixer that KE insisted on buying for baking bread. It ended up producing a huge amount of big, awkward parts to wash and a cake that wasn't even close to properly mixed (seriously, it looked like a failed marbled cake, with random chunks of yellow cake in what was supposed to be plain chocolate). This time I baked in my usual way, which is to say by hand, and the result was much better. The cake was as light and fluffy as the machine mixed one, but it was actually blended. I like being a Luddite when it comes to baking. The icing was chocolate too, with a few tablespoons of coffee in it. I hate coffee, but I do love coffee ice cream and chocolate-coffee icing. Yum. KE and E sang both "Hurra for deg" and "Happy Birthday" and a good time was had by all.

I finished nearly everything on the Lanesplitter skirt last night while watching MPGjr (cringe)--now all I need to do is buy elastic for the waistband, sew it down, and it's done. It turned out to be a size large rather than medium, and I think it probably would look better on if it were a medium, but I'll still wear it. Pictures to come, once the elastic is in.

Kjedsommelighet

Today started out rainy and way too early with a bed-wetting accident (5:45 am), so none of us have been feeling our best. While valiantly washing the dishes, KE rather longingly asked if I had the energy to bake boller, everyone's favorite sweet snack here in Norway. E and I did it together, and it was probably our most successful co-baking adventure to date. We just used the recipe off the flour package:

You can't get any more basic than that--we didn't have enough sugar and were out of raisins, but they were still dangerously good. Here was the first batch:

KE and E ran around outside in the rain for a while until the buns were done, then we watched Jerry Seinfeld's Bee Movie and gorged ourselves.

Saturday is always pizza night at our house, so I roused myself from the sofa long enough to make a pizza dough too, so that's two yeast doughs in one day. Mine turned out yummy:

As you can see, I'm experimenting with the macro lens on my camera. The pizza combination is: spinach, onions, black olives, feta and norvegia cheeses. E didn't feel like having a pizza today, so I introduced him to a silly American food tradition, namely "Pigs in a Blanket." This was not something I ever remember having other than at camp one summer, but I thought it was worth giving it a try, since I had the dough all ready:

I think E thought it was a little weird and kind of pointless, but it entertained him for a couple of minutes, which was really the point.

This morning I finished knitting the front of the Silky Wool pullover and sewed the seams. Here's what it looks like unblocked:

I tried to get the collar started, but I'm afraid I couldn't decipher the French instructions for that. It's on hold while I figure out what to do. Instead, I started on one of the sleeves. I decided to do it in the round (magic loop technique) because that seems to go so much faster, and allows me to avoid extra seaming (even though I really don't mind that...). I'm not super excited about the project, and a little frustrated about the collar, since that's the most important design feature and the whole reason I chose this pattern. I do have a pdf of the Plain and Simple pullover (Veera Välimäki on Ravelry), which has the same type of collar, so I may just follow that instead.

What I'm really excited about is the fact that I finally made a decision about what yarn to use for the Alice Starmore Fulmar pullover, a project I've been anticipating and dreading for nearly a year now. I ended up ordering Jamieson & Smith 2 ply jumper weight yarn in color number 1295. It's super hard to tell what the actual color will end up being (kind of a gray-blue-green heather?), so I'm very anxious for the yarn to arrive in the mail! Here's a really pretty one someone knitted. I'm planning on altering the shaping pretty radically. First of all, I'm planning on knitting in the round and making it much more fitted. I'm definitely going to at least do set-in sleeves, and may even try to convert it to a raglan. This will be my major project of the year.

So yeah, a boring, lazy, relaxing, laid-back Saturday...

Sukkersøtt

I think I'm in a sugar coma. Seldom have I had a less productive day. The only things I accomplished was to finish reading Knut Nærum's De dødes båt (very entertaining murder mystery containing multiple cabins) and skim through Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson's Synnøve Solbakken looking for the seter scenes. KE and I bought a bag of Twist chocolates while grocery shopping this morning, and downed the whole thing after lunch. NOT good!

Things have calmed down quite a bit with E. Here he is in full swing, playing "knight":

On Sunday we had KE's sister and nephew over in the evening. E loved having the visit. I baked one of my all-time favorite recipes, an apple cake using honey and kefir milk:

I first came across the recipe in a ladies' magazine back when I lived in Norway in the early 1990s. I used to make it all the time the two years I lived here, but haven't attempted it since. It was fun to dredge it up again--it's an incredibly easy recipe, and both tasty and relatively healthy, for a cake.

Though you can't tell it from the picture below, I've been progressing steadily on the sock sweater. I have split for the armholes, finished the back, and am halfway done with the front.

Uh, I think stripes are a recurring theme in E's wardrobe.

Random thoughts on the cabin book: originally I planned on the period 1814-2005 (with two sections, one on the nation-building period and one on the welfare state), but the more I think about it, the more reasons I see to start even earlier, with the Enlightenment period. During a brief conversation with the expert in early modern literature in my department, I learned that the cabin shows up all over the place in the didactic moral poetry of the period (not the literature I turn to first when looking for something to read). The farmer in his cabin is apparently one of the most prevalent and potent symbols in the Norwegian enlightenment. Plus I've already discovered lots of material on the seter (mountain dairy) that relates really closely to the cabins of the nation building period.

It would be great to have three sections to the book (Enlightenment, Nation-Building, Welfare State) for formal reasons. For tactical reasons it would be fantastic to have 1/3 of my book covering the early modern period: that is one of three specializations my department will be asking for in their next literature hire. And for personal reasons, I'm actually really starting to like the period, based on the little bit of work I've been doing on the 18th century writer Edvard Storm over the past month. I've been reading so much material in Gothic type that I'm actually starting to get the hang of it, and my speed is increasing significantly. It's so incredibly cool to be able to breeze through a couple of pages of an 18th century book in Gothic type!

Latest music discovery: Lily Allen. I was intrigued by her song "Fuck You" (the contrast between the sugary sweet melody and voice and the really vicious lyrics) but didn't quite know what to make of it until I discovered that it's an anti-Bush song. Rock on! (ETA: whoops, I may have been overly enthusiastic. Just discovered Dan Bull's open letter to Lily Allen thanks to Jilltxt.) I guess I should also fess up to the fact that my sordid Eurotrash past leads me to totally dig Lady Gaga too. There's something about her deadpan delivery and shamelessly (but self-ironic) commercial sound that I can't resist. No accounting for taste, right? To balance it out, KE's intense passion for Wilco is starting to rub off on me. We've been listening to their first album, A.M., in the car and I love it. It has so many echoes of the Byrds. And of course Eels is still probably my favorite current artist.