Black & Blue

Had to give this post an English title, since the Norwegian equivalent (mørkbanket) doesn't have the appropriate color associations. As you'll see from the pictures, there was a definite color trend today...

First off, I'm going great guns on the French Nautical Scarf:

I'm really excited about how it's turning out, and how I'll finally be able to get this yarn from 2008 out of my stash. Despite the small needles and fine yarn it's going pretty fast. Though I have to admit, that big ball of black yarn really doesn't look like it's getting any smaller.

One of the reasons I'm feeling wiped out today is actually a good thing; while KE was in Drammen today getting a new motor for our little yellow boat, E and I walked up to the local grade school to go to the flea market there in support of the marching band. We had fun looking around, and we were both really excited to find a (fake) bunad for E to wear on Constitution Day:

The set consists of the knickers and vest pictured here, plus a white cotton shirt with lace at the wrists and neck. The shirt is size 152 (way big for E, who is 135 cm tall) but the rest is size 140 and fits him surprisingly well. He'll need a pair of suspenders to keep the knickers up (lean kid that he is) and I'll need to get him some knee socks and black shoes (and maybe a silk scarf?), but this is a big step in the right direction! He was really pleased too, and definitely wanted it. This evening he said that a bunad is much cooler than a "president drakt" ("president outfit," his phrase for a suit) since a bunad is "more old fashioned." He especially liked the fake watch chain (not pictured here) that goes on the vest, though he thought it would be cooler on the pants (?!). I had to sew one button back into place and fix one of the hooks that the watch chain attaches too, and then I gave the set a good wash in the machine (the material is some kind of synthetic blend). So stinkin' cute!

Alpakka

I seem to be deep into an alpaca phase. Last weekend I finished up the Lightweight pullover:

I've been wearing it almost nonstop since it finished blocking. It's a little tighter than I would have liked, but everyone says alpaca sags, so I knitted it tightly and am hoping that the yarn starts to relax with wear.

Since there was so much of the charcoal gray left, I started a sweater for E with the leftovers. It's the Gathering Stripes pullover from 100% Rain. Here's a WIP shot:

Even thought I'm knitting the size 10 (E is 7), I'm worried that it's going to be too small. I love the combination of charcoal gray and apple green, though.

I also finally figured out to do with all that laceweight alpaca yarn I bought when I first discovered the world of Ravelry back in the fall of 2008. After buying it, I quickly determined that I am not a fan of knitting lace. I can do it, but I don't really enjoy it and I don't really see myself wearing lace shawls. And the color I (rather inexplicably) bought, a rather intense medium blue, doesn't work on me at all in most cases. The yarn has languished for nearly four years, after having been tried out in a couple of projects that were rejected.

To my delight, I came across a pattern on Ravelry called the French Nautical Scarf (Ravelry link), which consists of endless rows of narrow stripes knitted in laceweight yarn on small needles. In other words, the perfect project for someone like me who likes mindless, but obsessive and endless knitting projects. The pattern calls for plain stockinette bordered with garter stitch, but I didn't love the look of that, so I decided to modify and knit the entire thing in 1x1 ribbing (the same principle as the Noro Stripe scarf). I found a skein of plain black alpaca/silk laceweight at Tjorven in Oslo for the contrasting color, and away I went:

This is one seriously addicting knitting project. E knew that I was ostensibly knitting a sweater for him, but he kept seeing me working on this and asking innocently how his sweater was coming along. Oops. I've managed to stash it away for the time being, and am saving it to work on when  I travel to Bergen next month. The sweater for E is fun too, just not quite as addictive as this scarf. It's going to be huge, fully 60 inches/150 cm long.

There's been a lot of ups and downs at work recently (I got a major rejection, but also got called in for a job interview), so I've been feeling very unsettled and unfocused. Yesterday I finally just threw in the towel and took a few hours off from research to go to IKEA to stock up on some things that will help me sort out my stuff. This house has almost no built in storage, and there just hasn't been anywhere to put things. We finally got wardrobes up for our clothes, but until yesterday mine was still missing a few shelves and doorknobs to open them with. Our huge laser printer was on the floor in my office/wardrobe gathering dust along with the piles of sweaters and the suitcase that didn't yet have spots in the wardrobe. Ugh. IKEA saved the day, and I found the perfect unit to store the printer, got my shelves and doorknobs, and am delighted with the improvements:

Obviously I'm still struggling with book and paper storage. I actually have enough bookshelf space in our spare bedroom, but much of that is filled with yarn at the moment. I've decided I need a separate unit for storing my yarn, and probably also a small bookcase for this room where I can temporarily store whatever books I'm using in my current project at any given time. I didn't want to just buy some random IKEA thing for the yarn though. I'm thinking it would be great to find some kind of antique cabinet with glass doors. I'd also like to get a better chair (this red one is literally falling apart), preferably something that I can paint green. Those things (especially the cabinet) may take some time to find, but at least now I have a plan, and a much more workable office space.

Ivrig!

I finally got a round "tuit" and have a picture of the Lightweight Pullover in progress just after splitting for the arms and rejoining for the body. Here's what it looks like:

It's not much to look at, but boy-oh-boy am I excited about the project! This has the potential to be the most wearable of sweaters. I love that the yarn is undyed. I love the fine gauge (24 stitches over 10 cm on 3 mm needles--pretty much my ideal!). I love that it will have a large (but not too large) unstructured cowl. I'm glad it's going to have a little waist shaping. I love that it's just round after round after round of plain stockinette. I know that drives a lot of people crazy, but for me it's what knitting is supposed to be.

I'm pretty sure that I'll have lots of the gray alpaca yarn left over, most likely enough for a sweater for E too. I'm thinking of making Gathering Stripes with apple green stripes to contrast with the charcoal gray. It looks like a really fun and easy project that I think E would get a lot of use out of. So there's yet another project I want to have finished now. This is getting silly! But for now I'm going to stick with the Lightweight pullover and see if I can't get it finished by the end of easter break...

Påskeferie!

We're on easter break now, and although the sun is shining like crazy the wind has picked up and it's quite cold outside. So, as a consequence we're trying to come up with fun indoor activities.

I finally unravelled most of the charcoal gray Garnstudio Drops Alpaca yarn that I've tried knitting up no fewer than three times now. I decided that the perfect project for it (really! I'm serious this time!) has just to be Hannah Fettig's Lightweight Pullover, so I bought (!) the pattern and have started in on it. I'm a ways into the raglan increases now, and it seems to be going fine. I had to go down to a size 3mm needle (the pattern calls for 4mm) to get gauge, but other than that I'm following the (very easy) pattern slavishly.

In other knitting news, Webs (www.yarn.com) is having its annual sale starting today. I had heard that the coveted Louet Euroflax linen yarn was going to be on sale, so I haunted the website until the sale prices were posted, and put in an order. I ordered five skeins of the fantastic Pewter color. The regular Webs price is $23.95 and it's now marked down to $16.79, which is a solid 30% discount if my math is right. I've been wanting to buy enough of this to knit a sweater for years but could never find that color on sale, so I'm thrilled! I'm thinking of doing a longish version of the Amiga cardigan from the Knitty website. I've seen a couple of linen ones on Ravelry that are much longer than the pattern calls for, and they look great.

I also really want to knit KE a sweater. He's been wearing the same three sweaters to work all year, and really needs something A) lighter weight and B) different. I forced him to scroll through a Ravelry search of mens' sweaters in appropriate yarn weights, and he almost immediately picked out a really handsome design. It turns out it's designed by Norwegian blogger Tora Frøseth, and I think the sweater is going to be perfect for KE. The pattern calls for the Norwegian yarn, Ask Hifa 2 ullgarn, and KE zeroed in on a really cool color from their website almost immediately. He wants the color "Gulbrun" (6093, a kind of mustardy brown). Personally, I think it's going to be gorgeous. It's always a huge project to knit something for him because the arms and body are so long, but on the positive side, as a tall, trim guy he always looks great in the end result.

So, needless to say, I'm whipping myself up into a regular knitting frenzy right now. I wonder if it's seasonal?

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.

Våryr

Spring has sprung, at least tentatively! Today was a gorgeous day, and we went out for a little walk around the neighborhood to find out what's been going on under all that snow, ice, and darkness  for the past half year. Nothing much, as it turns out, but as always I love looking at the houses and cabins in my neighborhood.

E was home sick from school for three days last week, which meant I got in plenty of knitting time on the Porticus pullover. Here it is, just before the last waist increase and before I'm supposed to start doing the pattern again as a bottom edging:

I can never get my camera to photograph the green of this yarn accurately, which drives me crazy.

Yesterday E was feeling pretty perky, so we took the ferry into Oslo to get a bagel (his standing request--one of the things he misses most about living in the US) and go to the Cultural Historical Museum, which E raced through, but seemed to enjoy anyway. Personally I think it's a pretty poor excuse for a museum. On past visits alone I had only ever been on the first floor, which documents Norwegian cultural history from the stone age up to medieval times. E was eager to race through the exhibitions on all four floors, and I was certainly not impressed by the hackneyed ethnographic displays they apparently haven't touched for the last 50 years or more. Now everyone knows I'm a huge fan of Norway and love living here, but this museum is a good example of what occasionally drives me crazy about this country. Norway is one of the richest countries in the world, and they spend millions on all kinds of things, but they seem to have no idea what to do to improve this museum. The first floor displays are exactly as I remember them from the early 1990s, including the ridiculously stupid embroidered goddess-y "art" installations that are supposed to do ... something? ... to enhance the Viking era display. Grr!

But really, the point of the expedition was to get E out of the house and give him some new experiences, and in that sense it was a totally successful day. He bought his own orange juice on the ferry ride home, and you could tell it was a big deal to stand in line and pay all by himself.

Digg

Oooh, I'm totally loving the Porticus pullover! At this point (just a few inches into the yoke), I'm thinking I want to make one of these in every color. I just saw a beautiful black one on Ravelry that made me think that this would be the perfect thing for all that recycled charcoal gray yarn I have tried twice to make something out of.

Here's what the turtleneck and beginning of the yoke looks like:

It's really stiff with this shetland yarn, but based on my experience with the Bulgarian pleated skirt, which I made with the same yarn held single, it should really soften up when washed. I can barely put this down, and I'm especially jazzed about the yoke increases all the way around (instead of the usual raglan shaping, which I'm getting a little tired of...). Stay tuned!

Ganske mye garn, gitt!

My next yarn foray in London was to I Knit London, south of the Thames near Waterloo Station. My colleagues at UCL were appalled to hear that I had ventured into enemy territory, but actually I really dug the no-nonsense vibe down there. It kind of reminded me of some of the Mexican neighborhoods I've been to in cities like Chicago and Phoenix. Which is to say: yeah, a little scruffy, but also lively and full of interesting things to see and do. I didn't have my camera along with me, so I didn't get any snaps of the shop or of Lower Marsh Street where it's located. The selection itself was a bit disappointing, at least for someone looking for British yarns and with my very narrow tastes. I ended up buying a gorgeous skein of Canadian Handmaiden Seasilk:

It's the most amazing green. What sold me on this yarn was the store sample of the ubiquitous Swallowtail shawl by Evelyn A. Clark. There are something like 10,000 of these registered on Ravelry, and the sample in the store made out of this yarn was to die for. I started knitting it almost immediately (and knit the whole way on the train from London to Edinburgh last Friday) and found it pretty easy, considering that it's lace.

As everyone always says, it's almost impossible to take good pictures of lace in process--it just looks like a blobby mess--so there probably won't be any photo documentation until after it's finished, I'm afraid. But I promise that I have made it through the fourteen repeats of the bud pattern, have dutifully inserted a lifeline, and am letting it sit for a few days before starting in on the Lily-of-the-Valley pattern with its legendary "nups." Should be interesting.

In Edinburg I tracked down the K1 Yarns Knitting Boutique, which was as charming as could be from  the outside:

(It's the bright blue storefront) For some reason, however, I remained for the most part un-charmed by the selection here, again given that I was looking for British yarns. They did have a fair amount of British yarn (after all, they produce their own line of yarns), but there is something about the color palette they offered here that left me cold. In fact, I found the colors themselves surprisingly (and off-puttingly) cold. I really wanted to buy at least a skein of something to support a small independent yarn shop, but the only things I came close to liking were produced in Germany I think.

Since I had to go to a department store or two anyway to look for other things, I stopped off at the yarn department in Jenner's of Edinburgh. Much to my delight, I found a bag of discontinued Rowan Silky Tweed on sale for 50% off. It was a beautiful blue-ish teal, so even though I have more than enough sweater projects to work on, I snapped it up.

The saleslady there gushed about how fabulous this yarn is to work with, so I'm excited to give it a try. I may make an Hourglass Sweater to replace the one I frogged a couple of years ago. I always really liked the fit of the one I made, and it was an incredibly useful garment to own (unlike many of my sweater projects). We'll see.

But for right now, I'm starting in on a different project entirely, a pullover called Porticus (Ravelry link here) that I'm going to knit out of all that green shetland yarn I bought in Denmark a couple of years ago. The yarn is a light fingering weight which I'll double to get the right weight. This design is pretty much perfect for me: it's top down, has a high neck, waist shaping, and mostly plain stockinette but with some interesting detailing. I really hope it works out, especially since I'm not all that happy with how the Graystone tunic turned out. I finished it while in London (hence the starting of the Swallowtail):

It almost works. Unfortunately I got worried that it would be too tight over the hips so I did a couple of extra increases that in the end turned out to just make it look lumpy. I'm going to wash and block it and see if that helps at all. If it doesn't, it's really not that much to rip out and reknit. The problem of course is that spring is coming and it is pretty much already too warm to wear this. Ah well, there's always next winter!

ETA: someone on Ravelry recommended a different yar shop in Edinburgh, McAree Brothers. Filed away for future reference:)

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.

Skrekkstrikking

Oh my. Disaster struck yet again with that Alpaca yarn. Just before dividing for the arms, I discovered I had thirteen pattern repeats rather than twelve. That meant it would be impossible to have a symmetrical garment. I'm slow on the uptake, but even I realize this is a sign from the universe telling me to try working on something else.

So, I got out the weird, putty-colored yarn I bought in Finland back in August, and started in on the tunic version of Veera Välimäki's Graystone.

My plan is to knit it without the diagonal cable, and to knit until I run out of yarn or reach mid-thigh, which ever comes first. Please, O knitting gods, let plain garter stitch and worsted weight yarn on 5mm needles not be too difficult for me, as I apparently regress into knitting idiocy...

Last night we watched a movie on Netflix, Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island from 2010. It kind of fits in with my work right now, as I've been watching some Norwegian thrillers (De dødes tjern and Villmark) this past week. Shutter Island was well made and visually interesting (some fun retro touches), but didn't make it up there into the upper echelon of really great psychological thrillers. We also watched Christopher Nolan's Memento a week or so ago, since KE had never seen it. It blew me away in the theater back in 2000, but doesn't really hold up a decade later and on the small screen. The next movie I want to watch is Cloverfield.

The days are becoming noticeably longer. It's almost light by the time E arrives at school. I still can't take pictures in the light, which is a shame because it's such fun to see him really starting to master skiing. On Friday he even showed me how he can keep on his feet over the little ski jump the kids have built near the classroom. It is so amazing to see all these seven and eight year olds playing wildly in the mornings, some on skiis, some sledding, some just balancing on their feet down an icy "slide" that they've made along the path to school. These kids have no fear, incredible balance, and obvious joy at the winter conditions they play in. It's no wonder that I'll never get as good as walking on ice and skiing as other adults here--I didn't have 15 years of wild, frolicking play in these conditions to train me...

Alle gode ting er tre...

Third time's a charm, right? I've been trying for months and months to make a longish sweater/tunic out of fourteen skeins of charcoal gray Garnstudio Drops Alpaca yarn, and failing miserably. I initially bought the yarn to make a cabled turtleneck from one of my ancient Vogue Knitting magazines:

The yarn was way too dark to do justice to so many fussy cables, so I frogged the project and started in on the very popular Still Light tunic:

I actually came really close to finishing this (just one arm to go), but a nagging voice in my head kept telling me that the style wasn't right for my figure at all, so it's been stashed away in time out for a long time. Recently, I decided to make a clean sweep of it, and just frog the whole thing. Rather merciless, don't you think? My latest plan is to make a monochromatic zigzag dress (without the stripes, obviously, but with the same texture):

So far I'm really liking it. It's addicting to knit in the same way the Bulgarian Pleated Skirt from this summer was. I'm not sure if I have enough yarn, but I think it will be okay to use a different dyelot.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention another smaller project that I'm not totally happy with. I was trying to use up some magenta (!) yarn someone gave me, and came up with this little girl's cardigan (Ravelry link), which I plan to give to the daughter of a friend:

I'm actually finished with the knitting, but got a little demoralized because I ran out of yarn only two rows into the six-row bottom edging, so it curls. All I need to do is sew in ends, block, and find buttons for it. Maybe the blocking will help with the curling bottom edge? It's kind of cute, no? But totally not my cup of tea.

So I guess the good thing about all this is that I am knitting again, but still kind of bumbling along, without much success other than the Selbu mittens.

Sort/hvitt

I've been struggling with how to sum up 2011 in a blog post. It was kind of a messy year, with lots of thinking and fretting and frustration, and very little to show for it. I think it's symptomatic for the year that I:

• have more yarn stashed and more unfinished knitting projects that usual, and was only able to finish small projects (and not even always then) 
• made lots of plans for remodeling our house, but did  none of them 
• was judged to have professor status in my field, but don't have a permanent position to go with it  
• did a lot of thinking about the cabin book, but had to put it on hold so I only have about 90 pages to show for it all 
• had a lot of publications, but none of them count for very much because of the venues in which they appeared (note to self: be pickier about where you publish from now on) 
• experienced two deaths in my extended family but wasn't able to go through any rituals of closure because I live abroad
• did everything I could to prepare to apply for the one job I really want, but still can't apply because it hasn't officially been advertised yet
• still don't have my permanent residence permit worked out yet
• struggled with sleep issues and got almost no exercise

2011 is a year I am happy to leave behind. I'm not a person who does well with loose ends, ambiguity, risk, or uncertainty. I haven't felt like I have much of a support network, and I've been edgy and unsure of myself for most of the year.

I don't really have any new years's resolutions, but I think what I need more than anything right now is more order in my everyday life. We took a big step in that direction over the Christmas break by finally installing wardrobes in our house-with-no-closets. We also slightly redistributed how we're using the rooms in our house to better suit our patterns of activity. Things still aren't 100%, but it's much better. We still need to get a few more shelves and wire baskets from IKEA to finish out the wardrobes (though we did pretty well in guessing our needs, actually). The more things falls into place, the easier it is to eliminate the remaining pockets of chaos. This also means knitting from stash, as the amount of yarn I have is really starting to make me anxious, grateful as I am for all the free yarn I was given.

I'm also really looking forward to work this semester. This will be my first semester without teaching since 2007, and I'm so excited to maximize the opportunity. I'm also really stoked about all the conferences I'll be participating in this year. I really want to make the most of the opportunity to network and present good work in a stimulating manner.

I'm trying to think positively. It's not all black. In fact, in my knitting at least, things have been very black and white recently. First up, I finished the Fana pullover for E:

This was out of that Peer Gynt yarn that my colleague gave me. The black was originally red. As you can see, the finished product (a size 12!) is very big on this 7-year-old, but not nearly as big as I was expecting. Yikes, he's growing fast. And yes, that is a Playstation controller in his hands, I'm afraid. Resistance was futile when both son and father insisted.

Next up is my first ever pair of Selbu mittens:

The pattern is from the "Selbustrikk" booklet (LVS-5) published by Rauma Ullvarefabrikk. It's a women's mitten (pattern number 7) made with Rauma "old series" 2-ply yarn and one 2mm circular needle. They're not blocked yet in the photograph, and in fact I'm cheating, since the second thumb isn't yet knitted. If I had waited until I finished the thumb it would have been too dark to take a picture today!

All in all, I was super happy with the yarn, and did a much better job of the shaping than I have in the past on mittens. I was also thrilled to find this two-sentence piece of advice in the pattern booklet:

For at mønsteret i småmønstrede flater, skråstriper og lus skal bli jevnt, må trådene ikke bytte plass. [...] Strikkes det med begge trådene på venstre pekefinger, må trådene ligge i samme rekkefølge hele tiden.

To keep the pattern in areas with small patterns, angled stripes and spots even, do not switch the order of the strands. If both strands are carried on the left finger, they have to stay in the same order the whole time.

I have been doing two-color knitting since I was sixteen, and I never knew this. It makes a huge difference in the finished product, though it means the two strands get much more tangled. Previously, I have always twisted in order to avoid tangles, without paying attention to where the colors were placed as I was carrying them. So yay for an old dog teaching herself a new trick!

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...

Selvmedlidenhet?

It's odd how draining I found my confrontations with Norwegian bureaucracy last week to be. It really knocked me off course, and I feel completely demotivated to do anything at all. And the odd thing is, it actually turned out not to be so bad. When I went down to the police station to submit my documentation, the woman who processed my paperwork was kindness itself, and assured me that I wasn't too late at all.

I realize that my overreaction to the residency permit has to do with how much I have personally riding on it--every year I see stories in the media about people with children in Norway getting deported, and having to spend months and even years to regain the legal right to be with their children. Having a child makes a person feel so much more vulnerable to the whims of the state. If I were single and childless and got deported, I would be terribly upset, but would simply rebuild. If I were to be deported in the situation I'm in now, I think it would kill me.

The only measurable thing I was able to accomplish since the last time I posted was to knit a necklace. Yes, you read that right, a necklace! It's this cool (free!) pattern from Kirsten Johnstone:

This won't be the last time I'll be knitting this. In fact, I've already started on a second version with the same yarn (Classic Elite Silky Alpaca Lace). I only discovered at the last of the seven circles that I should really have been using an elastic cast off (sl1, K1, K these two together, *K1, K2tog*). So, I'll keep this one and send the second as the gift it was originally intended to be.


So now it's Monday, with my two last classes to teach for this semester, and I'm really, really hoping that I can manage to motivate myself to do the research and writing I had planned to get done before the Christmas break. There's a lot riding on that too, since it's material that--ideally speaking--needs to be done before I submit my next job application.


Motivation is such a fickle thing. I know exactly what I need to do. I know how to do it. I know that I can do it. I even know how to break it down into smaller, manageable parts. What I don't know how to do right now, is get myself to actually do it. I wish I had some kind of reward or something joyful and random that could shake me out of this funk, but I don't even know what that would be.

Farger

Fair Isle knitting has always appealed to me. I tried knitting an entire sweater in the early 1990s, but an utter lack of control over the shaping turned it into something I just had to abandon. But I still totally love the look, and have been thinking about trying it for a long time. This weekend I wasn't quite up to starting in on any of my bigger works-in-progress, so I dug out my fingering weight shetland yarn and a photocopy of a pattern for a Tam o' Shanter from an ancient Vogue Knitting, and dove in. My first attempt was a disaster, but luckily this pattern is so small that I just decided to start over with a new version once I saw which way the first one was going. Here's a snapshot of my second attempt:

Unfortunately the colors are really harsh here because I had to use a flash (not much light in Norway these days...). But you get the idea. Even though I have nine different colors (and am using seven here) I can tell that I need a much wider variety in order to really start getting the subtle fair isle effect. That green stripe through the XO pattern really doesn't work. I wish I had something more muted than that color, but I really don't. I am really happy with the corrugated ribbing though. And in normal lighting the  beige and yellow background colors blend beautifully into each other. If I had about ten more colors to work with, I think I'd be in pretty good shape. The basic principles aren't hard to figure out (when the background transitions from light to dark, the motif colors are supposed to transition from dark to light, for example). So far this is a pretty easy pattern, so I think I'll be making a few more as I acquire more colors (high on my list for when I get to London in February!).

Otherwise, things have  been hectic here with school stuff for E. But now the Christmas market is over for the year, and I can start to relax a little on the home front, though I've got tons of work related stuff on my plate. So much, in fact, that I'm feeling very overwhelmed and just want to curl up on the sofa with my knitting.

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...

Flyt

Since nothing else I try knitting seems to be working, I gave into temptation and finally started in on the cashmere yarn I bought back in August. I'm so glad I did:

 The (free) pattern is Lava Flow Cowl (Ravelry link). Since I have more than enough yarn, I added an extra cable repeat, and will make the cowl much longer so that I can wrap it twice. I love reversible cable patterns, like the bronze stole I knit out of Rowan Kidsilk Haze a couple of years ago. So even though I'm a little disappointed in the bland color, I'm very excited about the project. Oh, and check out that provisional cast on at the bottom. Duh, that was so easy.

E said the funniest thing on the way to school the other day. He was telling me how cows have four stomachs, and he informed me in all seriousness that the first one is for soda, the second for meat, the third for rocks, and the fourth for candy and grass. Natch.

Knall!

A colleague of mine was cleaning out her attic and was about to throw out a couple of bags of yarns from the 1980s, which the name on the labels caused her to pause for a moment; it was Sandnes Peer Gynt yarn, and apparently she thought of me immediately (I love it that I'm apparently now associated with Peer Gynt in the minds of my colleagues in Nordic literature), and decided to ask if I had any use for it before she pitched it. Well, duh, of course I wanted free yarn, especially of that kind of high quality. We arranged a transfer at her office, and I've got it all safely home now.

My heart sank a little, though, when I saw the eleven skeins of the most garish cherry red you could ever imagine:

Anyone who knows me well knows that I have a deep, almost pathological aversion to precisely that kind of red. But since this is over 2000 meters of perfectly lovely yarn, clearly I'm going to need to look into options for dying it. I've been thinking maybe Kool-aid dying, perhaps using blue or purple to make some kind of purplish color...

Thankfully, there were also seven skeins of the basic creamy white, but unfortunately that is divided between two quite distinct dyelots:

and:

Since this is often used as a contrast color in stranded patterns, that's not really a problem. It will be fun trying to come up with projects for all this yarn. And if that weren't enough, there were also three unidentified skeins of what looks to be fingering weight wool in an extremely dark navy blue:

This is really appealing to me for some reason, though I have no idea what do do with it, or even how much there really is. Somehow it is shouting "garter stitch" at me.

All this added to the yarn I bought in Finland back in August means that I've suddenly got a really big stash to deal with. That's not really a problem, except that I seem to be knitting so slowly. The "Ung høst" pullover is taking forever. I'm a few inches into the raglan shaping, and the number of stitches in the round doesn't seem to be decreasing at all:

 
I had envisioned this as a quick project to get back into the swing of things, and it's been dragging on now for two months. There are just too many other things going on, I guess.

I dvale

My knitting mojo is gone. I've been progressing slowly on the Ung høst pullover, and I had hoped that I might even finish it this past weekend, but alas no. I had a little trouble working out how to set up the raglan decreases in a way that looked nice with the 3 x 2 ribbing that makes up the body and sleeves of the sweater, so I ended up having to rip out about 5 cm of raglan decreasing and start over again. But (as always with frogging) it was totally worth taking the time to fix it, as it looks much better on the second attempt.

Otherwise things are very low key and low energy around here. We're sort of hunkering down for the onslaught of winter, and enjoying a spate of sunny (though cold) autumn days. Even the smallest tasks seem insurmountable right now, though I am slowly working through things, both on the home front and at work.

Today will be kind of crazy. I've been invited to a seminar where Norway's most renown novelist will be giving a talk this afternoon. I'll have to throw myself into a taxi right after class and high tail it up to a conference center high above Oslo to catch it. I didn't plan this (just got the invitation on Friday), but I'm teaching one of his novels in today's class. Serendipitous (though it would have been better had I been able to bring the students too).