"Beskikk dit Hus"

I think nearly everything that could go wrong since last Thursday did. Our washing machine broke. With impeccable timing, E wet his bed three mornings in a row as a celebration of the fact that we had no washing machine. I did a terrible job teaching. I had a monumental case of PMS. I was stood up about three different times in different contexts, including the girl we hired to cover our week to clean E's preschool (yes, the parents have to do it all, from scrubbing toilets to emptying trash to vacuuming and washing about 120 square meters; yes the girl who agreed to do it blew us off on two of our three evenings). E was kind of on the warpath. KE had what seemed like dozens of extra activities scheduled, meaning I barely saw him. Our house just reached a new nadir of filth. And to top it all off, I had to dip into savings to make it through to my next paycheck, which thankfully arrived yesterday. I can't remember the last time I had to do that.

As of today, I'm slowly starting to impose some order on the chaos. I actually spent most of the day cleaning, which is a rarity. KE was a hero and, with the help of a neighbor, carted home our brand-spanking-new laundry facilities. With a huge sigh of relief, I present you with...my bathroom:

What is that strange creature on the left, you ask? Lo, it is a dryer. We haven't had one since leaving the US. I have been quite smug about not needing one, but I had to bite the bullet and admit that there's no way I can keep up with all the bedding and workout gear by air drying on two indoor drying racks. I feel like a sellout, but I also want to have a tidy house. And of course I don't have to use it for every load of wash.

Even better than these behemoths (well, almost) is what E did with some of the packaging:

Too cute.

Rarely can I say that I'm too stressed out to knit, but that was certainly the case this week. Normally I would have been done with the Riborama pullover by now, but I have barely made any progress at all. I've managed to finish one arm and get a few inches on the other. In the meantime, I've done a little experimenting with the Shetland yarn I bought in Denmark this summer. Five of the eight colors I bought looked really lovely together, but I couldn't get any of the other three to work into the combination, so I broke down and ordered another color online (BC Garn). Here's the result, which is the corrugated ribbing for an Ivy League Vest (Ravelry link here, non-Ravelry link here), which I'll probably add arms to:

I'm thinking that looks pretty good. I'm not going to agonize any more over it, and just go with what I have. It's the lightest, wheat-ish color in the middle that I just ordered.

Another good thing about this terrible week bears remembering: I exchanged WIPs with my friend L at work, and we had a really productive and exciting critique session yesterday morning. She had such amazingly insightful comments about my chapter on the Peer Gynt films. Since yesterday was the fifteenth of the month, I also did a page tally for the book, and I now have 110 (out of a projected 170) pages written! Granted much of that is rough, but still, I'm making decent progress. I was really anxious for L's feedback on this chapter so that I could get a sense of whether I'm on the right track with the book, or whether it's a big waste of time. She was enthusiastic about it, which gives me a lot of hope.

ETA: a link to one of the coolest studio apartments I've seen in a long time on Apartment Therapy. Here's the same place during an earlier decorating iteration. I think what I like is less the individual elements than just the idea of starting out life as a college kid in a place like that. I'd love to be able to set up E in a funky place of his own if/when he goes away to study (in about 12+ years...). Look at me, already living vicariously through my child and he's not yet six!

Shoe wrangling

I think I may have reached a low point in how mundane I can make a blog entry: today I'm going to write about organizing shoes!

We live in a house without closets, and like most families we have tons of seasonal outerwear and footwear of all persuasions.

I also have a completely different philosophical approach to cleaning than my husband. He is what I would call a stoic. He sees the mess and dirt, then dutifully picks everything that's strewn around (say shoes) up, cleans thoroughly, then puts everything back in an orderly fashion. Usually it's a mess again within hours, but at least he's done his duty.

I, on the other hand, have a fundamental antipathy toward any type of tidying that takes work, and to any type of cleaning that requires me to pick things up and then put them back again afterward. So basically, unless there is a good system in place, I never clean. That's not good.

This weekend I reached a breaking point on our entry way. I knew we needed a system for all our stuff, so I broke down and spent a bunch of money on a coat rack and a wall-mounted shoe rack.

Here's the before of our shoes (not including any winter shoes, I might add...):

There's no way I'm picking all that up to vacuum. But this I can handle:

Yay! 13 cm of clearance under the shoes means that I don't have to pick up a thing to vacuum! Unfortunately, I need to buy a second rack (with two shelves) to corral absolutely all of the footwear that we typically have out, but now at least I know that there is a solution to the problem. We just need three big hooks on one of the other walls for our three backpacks, and the hall will be perfect.

Oh my gosh, I was just about to write and say that my hands hurt too much from all the assembling of various things to knit, when I realized I didn't mention the most important organizational home improvement around here. Ta-da:

Here's a little corner of my "roterom." It's one of the two "Billy" bookcases. This one is filled with yarn, fabric, and craft books (oh, and the compact edition of the OED). I know that this isn't much of a stash compared to many, but it's enough to make me feel guilty. I hope that seeing it all will help me curb any desire to buy more before I've used up a lot of this. The other bookcase (out of the picture to the left) is filled with my small library of beloved books that came overseas with me. The bags on hooks each contain a work-in-progress.

I love getting things organized! Even I can clean when there is a logical place to put things. I just hope my hands recover from all the assembly...

ETA: a very juvenile (and very funny) short video on swearing in Norway. I love kids like this.

Ordning och reda

KE got revved up this morning and randomly started cleaning without even telling me, which got me cleaning too, and golly we got a lot done. One task was cleaning out the bins in the hall that are filled with winter gear. I washed everything -- machine washed the things that could be, and filled a bathtub with the handwash knitted items. They're all spread out on the lawn now drying in a most satisfying fashion:

With the fabulous summer weather I've gotten a lot of small things done: massive amounts of laundry (drying on a rack goes much faster in the sun), shifting of boxes out of the storage unit (for the first time in 3 months we can shut the door!), sorting of recycling (before it got to be too much to manage easily), and putting out bark in the flowerbeds (not quite done, but maybe this evening when it cools down I'll finish the job), for example. Feels great!

The long weekend has been productive in terms of knitting too, though not according to my original plan. I had the best intentions for starting up on the Whisper Cardigan again, but I realized after I got it out that I don't actually have the right needle for the ribbing band. I was shocked, as I really thought I had a complete set of circular needles, gathered over many years. I have to admit that I wasn't all that sad about having to stuff it back into time out. Instead, I decided to improvise a very basic pullover with some of the yarn I bought in Madison last month. I'm borrowing bits and pieces very loosely from two different aran weight patterns to make a plain picot edged pullover. So far so good. I'm of course anxious that I'll run out of yarn. Here's how far it's come in 3 days of knitting (gotta love aran weight stockinette!):

I wonder about whether I should have made set-in sleeves instead of the dropped shoulders I'm planning. If I have anything left over after finishing the body and the neck, I may still do it. My plan is to make a picot edge around the neck opening too. I'll knit in the round up to the armhole openings, then separate front and back. I'm doing the waist shaping from the Hourglass Sweater to make it a little less boxy. It's been years since I designed my own pattern, though I used to do it all the time in high school. I don't know why I stopped, or why I suddenly decided to try it again. It seems like a reasonable risk with such a quick knit. I probably wouldn't be as willing with a fingering weight project.