Svigermor

KE dragged all of his Christmas decorations down from the attic over the weekend. The creme of the crop are two lovely Christmas mail holders that his mother made in 1967, the year that he was born. They are quite similar. Here's a full shot of one of them:

I was really moved to see them. KE's mother died in 1970, so he doesn't have many memories of her. In photographs she is quite lovely, with a charming cleft chin that E has inherited. I love seeing her handiwork in these mail holders. Check out the detail of the heart basket:

Clearly she was a patient woman! She was ill most of her life--she had polio and died of a rare form of blood cancer. Apparently she had to undergo a major operation while KE was in the womb--something about her intestines becoming twisted. As the story goes they had to lift the fetus in the womb out of her abdomen to complete the procedure. I want to find out as much as I can about her while all her siblings are alive and able to communicate (a brother and three sisters are still doing very well).

I've been knitting up a storm as usual. I wonder when this knitting jag is going to end? First up is a very simple lace scarf for Grannie for Christmas:

You can't go wrong with a lace pattern that has only one pattern row! I did a sloppy job on the blocking--it's much narrower at one end than the other--but it is quite lovely and a good use for the angora yarn I received in the Ravelry swap I participated in.

Next up is the heavy sweater coat I promised my Mom. We picked out the yarn while she was here. Since it's super bulky weight it goes really fast. This is the last two days of evening tv-knitting:

Not much to look at I'm afraid. The color is very washed out in the snapshot (darned flash). It's a very rich coppery color that has a hint of green in it--very cool.

We have some last minute Christmas shopping to do today, plus we need to get a tree. Otherwise we have all the food for Christmas Eve dinner. We're thrilled that the solstice is here and that the days will be getting longer and lighter. It is just so dark right now, even as far south in Norway as we are.

familien min...

Just got E off to bed, and I'm feeling a little traumatized. Unfortunately, he's been in a long stretch of acting out, and it comes to a head in him hitting me pretty hard. It's so distressing. I have never been hit by anyone in my life, so the fact that my own son is doing it is hard to process. We would be less concerned if he showed remorse, but he doesn't. In so many other ways he's really perceptive and sensitive, so I just don't get this. I'm really hoping it will pass, and of course totally paranoid that it's some kind of red flag for a major personality disorder.

This morning I got an email from my Dad containing two snapshots that a college friend of his took. Apparently the guy recently scanned them and sort of randomly sent them to my dad. They're amazing:

That's my dad standing on the steps with the dorky hat and beard. My mom is (rather obviously) the woman sitting on the steps. In this next picture she's the brunette:

Apparently my dad sent these to her too, and she could barely recognize herself. She said it was only because the woman looked like me that she knew it must be her. She figures these were in their last year of college, sometime in 1964-65. She can tell by the hat, since it is "pre-stetson" and pre "the hat he got from my dad"...whatever those were.

Finished the front on the linen tunic, sewed the shoulder seams, and knitted up the neck edging. Now all I need is two sleeves and seaming and I'm done with number 12. This evening, however, I'm going to climb into bed early to read a murder mystery, André Bjerke's Døde menn går i land from 1947. It's background reading for the cabin book, really!

En spøkelse fra fortiden

Earlier this term I noticed a woman in the crowd here on campus who looked oddly familiar--she has a very distinct personal style that appears to be inspired by interwar boyhood. After passing her at a distance once or twice on my way to or from class her face worked its way into my cerebral cortex and simmered there for a while. Suddenly I remembered who she reminded me of. Back in the late 80s I had spent a couple of quarters taking classes at WWU (in my home town of Bellingham, WA). She looked a lot like a young woman I had taken a class with and struck up a passing friendship with.

So today on my way to the library today I passed right by her on my bike. I just had to stop her and ask whether she had gone to WWU in the late 80s, and lo and behold, she had! Turns out it was a very frustrating class on Existentialism that we had taken together (winter quarter 1987 to be exact--I checked my transcript). We were both just passsing through WWU on our way to other places, which makes this all the more unlikely. She did a PhD here and then took a library job on campus. It was so fun to reconnect briefly, and we're now making plans to get together. So many times one thinks one recognizes someone and it turns out to be a false alarm. This time it wasn't. Such a treat. This plays right into my nostalgia trip of 2008.

Edited to add: she keeps a very spiffy blog!