Gjeldsslave

There have been people working on paving our street for weeks and weeks now. It turns out it's not just a question of throwing down some asphalt. They have had to dig up (and by that I mean pound out huge amounts of bedrock) and lay an entirely new road bed and drainage. They're working right in front of our house, so the other night the three of us went out to inspect. Here's some of what we saw:

Yes, that rubble is actually the street. And here's what our house looks like from the road. Notice that we never finished painting the trim (boo!). This is at about 8 o'clock in the evening, and it was quite chilly. We can also really tell that the days are starting to get shorter (hence the headlamp on E).

Today I had a visit at home from a contractor to talk about remodeling our house. KE and I have been making plans ever since my Mom visited us this summer to bump up the roof (the "middle" section above) and add a second floor. The house used to be a duplex with two small units (both under 800 sq ft). When we moved back, we (well, KE) knocked a hole in the common wall and we took over both units. Now, with the prospect of my Mom moving to Norway in the not-too-distant future, we are hoping to convert the smaller unit back into a separate apartment for her and add living space upstairs on our side for the three of us.

The contractor thought our plans sounded totally do-able, but insisted that we really need an architect for the project. Fair enough. He also gave us a ball park estimate of about 1.2 million NOK (a little over $200,000 US). Ouch! But amazingly, that's still way below what it would cost to buy an apartment for her. Like about half as much! This housing market is totally insane.

We're not entirely frightened off by the price though (especially since KE is really happy in his new job), so I guess we'll be moving ahead with the plans. First step is talking to the architects that the contractor recommends.

Since our budget is going to be tight, I am celebrating by making this Lima bean soup. It's still simmering, but smells divine. We'll be eating a lot of rice and beans over the next few years, I suspect, but given my love of legumes, that shouldn't be a problem!

Impulsiv

Usually I'm pretty monogamous when it comes to knitting. I don't like to start new projects when I have one going, and I've really been enjoying working on the Still Light tunic. So why is it, then, that I rather sheepishly have to report that I cast on for a totally new project today?

I've been thinking a lot about both dresses and skirts, and there are many fun patterns on Ravelry. While browsing around I came across something called "Bulgarian knitted skirt"; it's a free Japanese pattern blogged here, though thankfully someone on Ravelry was generous enough to translate it to English. Not quite sure why this is considered Bulgarian? At any rate, it's a fabulously simple A-line pleated skirt knitted in fingering weight yarn--perfect for some of that yarn I bought in Denmark last summer. Somehow I can't feel guilty about wantonly casting on something new when it's yarn that I have on hand. Much better than ordering new yarn, which I confess I've been a little tempted to do recently.

Here's what the start looks like:

(The color should be greener than this. Couldn't adjust it to save my life.)  There's a hem (about 3/4 inch) at the top for an elastic waistband. Then you start in on 1x1 rib for 12 cm, followed by an increase row, followed by 2x2 ribbing, then another increase row followed by 3x3 ribbing, then finally another increase row followed by a section of 4x4 ribbing. No counting, no thinking, just acres and acres of ribbing.  So addicting.

I don't think I ever posted a picture of the needle holder ("nålhus") that I bought a few months ago for my darning needles. It has to be one of my all-time favorite purchases:

If you are a knitter with a bunch of darning needles stashed away in various places, but you can never find one, you really, really need one of these. I got mine at Husfliden in Oslo for about 65 kroner. Well worth it!

We worked inside this morning for a couple of reasons. E woke up vomiting again (poor guy!!! We're really stumped as to why he's had such stomach trouble this summer), and it was pouring rain. I started out by putting up shelving in our storage room ("bod"), and then later in the day KE took apart more of the kitchen in our bedroom (!) in preparation for installing closets (yes, we have no closets). Here's a shot of the "bod" (though I warn you, it's not much to look at):

The shelves to the right and the drawer unit are part of the former kitchen. Now we just have to organize all the stuff that will be going back in!

My Mom arrives at the end of the week for a short visit and we're all really excited to see her. It would be great if we can get some of these indoor projects taken care of by the time she gets here, though that may be overly ambitious.

"Mit Bonde-Hyte et Konge-Slot skal blive"

What's missing from this picture?:

The answer is snow! Its gone. All gone. I am ecstatic. The grass is on the verge of becoming green again! Today was a gorgeous day and we were outside for nearly all of it. I took a whole bunch of pictures of the house and the neighbors' houses because we are gearing up to stain the house later on this spring, and I'm hoping to make a few small adjustments to the color scheme. I've never been wild about the red roof - brown-red base - ochre trim - blue door - combination. I don't really like any of the colors individually very much, and together I find them grating. So change may be afoot. Here are some of the factors to consider:

1. The house to the south really dominates our yard:

As you can see, the two base browns are fairly close, but they don't really coordinate very well. The next house up the street is pretty much the same reddish brown too, so it would be nice to distinguish ourselves a little bit.

2. There's a big white house behind ours that totally looms over the terrace:

It's actually a fairly attractive house, but we feel like we're under surveillance, so we're thinking of putting up a fence. Even though it has a big new addition, it's a fairly traditional house, and it would be nice to connect with it visually in some way, since it's so dominant.

3. On the north side there's an unassuming red house:

I think a darker brown would look better next door to a true red than our reddish brown. The neighbors both died a year ago, and we're not sure yet what their heirs are going to do with the property, so it's a bit of an unknown factor.

4. The house that shares the property line with both the red house and ours has my favorite color scheme of them all:

It's not really visible from the street view of our house, or from most of our yard, which means that it wouldn't be a big deal if we copied the scheme. I love dark brown (bordering on black) houses with white trim. I think their roof is a little too bright, but I'm seriously thinking of trying to go a few shades darker with our brown and then change the ochre trim to a warm (creamy?) white to emulate but not copy this. Not sure what to do with our blue doors, though. We'll do a dry run on the garage during Easter break, then if we're happy with the result, do the whole house once we're done with school.

I sat out on the deck and knitted and read and dozed for most of the afternoon. Got the body of the Noro Laurel sweater finished and started on the cowl neck. I'm basically satisfied with it:

The sizing is turning out totally different from the Laurel I knitted out of a different single ply worsted weight yarn on the same needles. Very strange.

Ett skritt forover og to skritt bak

I finished Miss Honeychurch last night and wasn't happy with my experiment in waist shaping, so I ended up ripping out roughly the last 6 inches and was back at square one this morning. Since I'm kind of treading water any way (waiting for the Olympics to start in 12 days before casting on for "Ravelympics" projects) it doesn't bother me too much to have to knit all that over again. Here's a progress shot of the project at least:

Not too much more to go. The good news is I have oodles of yarn left over. Way more than I expected, in fact. It's almost a problem in that there is nearly enough for another project of some kind. I think I'll just let it stew. It may end up becoming something really simple, like dishrags.

I mentioned that R and E gave us one of CL's old sweaters a while back, but I don't think I ever posted a picture so that you can see how fabulous it is. CL's grandmother knit it for him and the colors (and the fit) are also absolutely perfect for E too. It's made out of some kind of superwash yarn:

I think she pretty much just made the pattern up, and it was the first project she was able to make after having been in physical therapy, so it's got a lot of personal significance. As you can see from the background the kitchen is still in progress. KE got the travertine tiles up on the wall yesterday, though. They haven't been grouted or sealed yet, so this snap doesn't really give the full effect, but even so I think they're pretty great:

There. I feel much better producing a post that actually has pictures this time, even if it isn't the finished objects I had been hoping for.

Uten tittel, tom for ideer

Yesterday I had my first meeting with my mentor. It was great, and it seems like he didn't feel it was a waste of his time. I asked him about his own experience and it was interesting to hear how much emphasis he placed on the importance of understanding Norwegian culture. I think he'll be a great sounding board for understanding the cultural differences behind the conflicts and frustrations that arise. He's also really funny and super competent in his field. Definitely someone to emulate!

Having said that, I think I'm at a low point in terms of my job. It had to come some time. I've been really put out about the huge amount of work teaching the NOR1300 break out group is going to entail. I don't see how I'm going to get anything done on the book. I was feeling sort of pouty, thinking that I'm being overworked. I finally got the template for calculating my 25% of non-research work hours. I was shocked and dismayed to find how much of what I have done (and been asked to do) does not even count! According to the template I'm actually under the number of hours for teaching and administration. I'm going to be asking a bunch of people about this over the next few weeks--presumably there are ways of reporting these things (like writing grade justifications, giving a lecture at the Faglig-pedagogisk day, etc.).

My break from knitting is helping my hands. Anxious to start up on the fair isle yoke pullover, though. Only a little more to go before I can put it together and start on the fun part, i.e. the yoke itself.

I finished unraveling the green cotton sweater yesterday morning and knitted a little swatch for Miss Honeychurch yesterday afternoon. I'm pretty sure it's going to work. I've changed my mind and am going to do the body first after the yoke. I didn't unravel the yarn from the part where the sleeve openings were cut. It looks like there's approximately 1 meter of yarn for each row there. I'll save it for a worst case scenario if I run out of yarn on the sleeves.

I popped into the Majorstuen Fretex store yesterday when I had 10 minutes to kill before my mentoring meeting, and lo and behold I found what is practically the holy grail: a black, 100% shetland wool, DK weight, men's XL cabled sweater with turtleneck! It was an acceptable (for Norway) price: 169 NOK (29.50 USD!). The seams are all great and I saw no damage. I have it stashed in the freezer for the next 3 days on the off chance it contains moth eggs, since it is wool after all, and I'll wash it before I start unraveling. I don't have a particular project in mind, and it's so handsome that KE might just claim it as is, once he sees it.

Today I'm taking some time off from work to go with KE to choose tiles for our kitchen. I'm so excited! Once those are up then he'll be able to install the upper cabinets. Can't wait!!! We've been "in progress" for so long that I can't remember what it's like to have a normal kitchen.

Oh, one other thing: last night I composed a draft of the letter we have to write in support of our application to the Waldorf preschool. KE looked it over, liked it a lot and found no mistakes! I think that's the first time I've ever written an entirely mistake-free and totally idiomatic document in Norwegian. I've never had to write so much in Norwegian as in this past year, and I think it has really helped.

Hurra!

Tuesday was a day of major accomplishments, after a harrowing week.

Last week KE made an appointment for me to take the drivers test on Tuesday. Here in Norway you have to rent a car from a driving instructor for the test (they require a car with the extra set of pedals). I had to take a couple of drivers' training test drives with a driving instructor who made me incredibly nervous in order to be allowed to rent the car. The man seriously made me so nervous that I could hardly function. I had to spend 3 hours in that car with him in the evenings driving in the dark and rain, and I was nearly in tears both evenings. What a huge relief it was when it actually came to taking the test. The man who evaluated me was totally mellow, I was barely nervous at all, and it was mid day on another rare mild and sunny November day. We drove through the lovely rural landscape around Drøbak, Ås, and Ski, and it went nearly perfectly. Words cannot express my relief over getting over this hurdle.

KE got a lot further on the wall project, and our kitchen was restored to nearly normal working order. Here he is contemplating what to do next.

We don't know what surface we want on the wall. We don't know what kind of countertop we want. We don't even really know whether we want cabinets on the wall, or whether we want to keep it open. Kind of a crazy way to remodel, but also fun, since we get to evaluate each element as we go along. E got to practice his carpentry skills with the scraps:


Meanwhile, I finally finished the Silke Tweed sweater. As I expected, it is a couple of inches too short to be flattering--KE saw that right away when I put it on to model (good eye on that guy). But it is a completed, wearable sweater, and the twelfth that I have knit this year. Yay!

I'll probably just live with it for a couple of weeks and add the extra inches over Christmas break. Otherwise I love the color, fit, and fabric of the finished product. Here's the full NaKniSweMoDo List:

1. Drops 58-18 turtleneck sweater (like)
2. Georgie cardigan (frogged)
3. Hourglass sweater (love)
4. Drops 110-1 jacket with pleats (frogged)
5. Islender sweater (loved by KE)
6. Green cardigan (like: used yarn recycled from the Georgie cardigan)
7. self-designed picot pullover (frogged)
8. Whisper cardigan (meh: need to re-do the bind off much more loosely and maybe it will look okay)
9. Gathered pullover (meh: need to re-do the neckline, which is way too low, but otherwise it looks promising)
10. Drops 112-24 linen tunic (love, love, love, despite almost destroying it)
11. Francis Revisited (love, love, love: used yarn recylced from the picot pullover)
12. Drops 54-10 Silke Tweed pullover (meh: need to add 2 inches to the length)

So I "only" have ten sweaters to show for all that knitting, but who cares. It was a fun challenge and I ended up with a couple of garments that I really enjoy wearing. I tried to start "nether garments" for E last night from Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitter's Almanac but I couldn't get gauge with the yarn I had been planning to use. I'll try something else tonight.

Workwise, Monday I got to the point where I could send off a draft on an essay was due this Thursday, and Tuesday I got word that my revisions to the article I wrote on Erlend Loe's use of film in Volvo lastvagnar have been accepted, and that the article will appear in the next issue of Edda. That's a big deal, since an article there is worth 3 times what an article in Scandinavian Studies is worth. Along with the Ibsen Studies article that will appear at around the same time I will already have "earned" the same amount of "points" as I would with a book published by a minor publisher. Crazy. Then Tuesday I had a breakthrough thought in the shower about how to conceptualize the cabin book. It has to do with Foucault's concepts of archaeologies and genealogies, and I am pleased to say that I came up with it while thinking about the dissertation chapter that my last remaining student from my previous job sent me a couple of weeks ago.

Byggeplass

Today, a gloriously sunny and mild day in late November, KE drove out to the lumber yard and bought all the materials he needs to build the wall between the kitchen and living room. It's very exciting! Things will be chaotic, especially since we're having Thanksgiving dinner at our house next Saturday, but oh well, we'll manage. The mess will if nothing else make it a memorable meal.

Here's a few before shots. First looking from the living room toward the kitchen:

KE is going to build a wall from the left wall out to the post that will cover the cabinets, but will leave a triangular opening at the top. As you can just glimpse in this picture, the fridge will go on this wall, which means that we can move the kitchen table in to the kitchen (it's been in the living room all this time since we moved in). We tried it out this morning and it was delightful:

Here's a shot looking from the kitchen into the living room through what will be the new wall:

And here's the partially deconstructed kitchen. KE had to unscrew all the lower cabinets and move them around to make room for the fridge. The opening where he's storing the doors will be the home of a new dishwasher, whenever we get around to buying one.

And finally, here is the total chaos that is our living room right now. All the new lumber, plus cabinets that we're not going to be using in the kitchen, plus general mess. Eeep.

Me, I'm planning on escaping to this blog on tiny houses, and of course knitting. Closing in on the end of the Silke Tweed sweater:

I really like it, but wish I had made it even longer. I am contemplating knitting "flaps" down from the edge at the back and front in order to make it more tunic like. I think it would work to unravel the cast on edge and knit down from there. We'll see. KE is nagging me to make long johns for E, though, so I need to finish this up quickly.

Uønsket?

Is it just me, or is it weird that not a single person here at the university I work at has expressed any regret over the fact that I'm leaving? My only real complaint about the job here has been that I haven't made the kind of close connections to colleagues that I had a ton of at my previous job. Mostly, I have blamed that on myself, since I came here pregnant and newly married. Starting a family took up all my non-work time, so I haven't had the energy to put out for making work friends. But at a certain point things settled down, and I made concerted efforts to connect with people. I did manage to twist a few people's arms enough that they would go out to coffee with me, but the efforts were never returned. So I guess I shouldn't be surprised that no one here is sad to see me go.

But that doesn't stop me from feeling sorry for myself! I feel like I have a lot to offer my friends. I'm loyal and supportive and enthusiastic. I also feel like I put a huge amount of effort into this job. It sucks that no one here recognizes or values that. Sorry for the pity party, but it really hurts my feelings that I've been doing a job for four years that no one seems to care about. When I brought the whole fellowship thing up to my boss the first time his primary reaction was to be pissed off at the extra work my leaving would cause him.

I don't want to pout, and I don't want to leave in a huff. It would just be so nice if someone here at my job would say "I'm sorry to see you go." Rant over.

On the upside, we finally finished our Twin Peaks marathon. Loved, loved, loved it. I had to reserve Fire Walk With Me at the library just to get the full package. I know it's supposed to be really bad, but I'm just not ready to let go of the series. Oddly, episode 17 from season two is missing on CBS.com. Hmmm. Mysterious. It gets rave reviews online, so I'd really like to see it.

And we got off pretty easy with fixing up the house to sell: under $700 for all electrical and plumbing work. Luckily the buyers had put a clause in the purchase contract that capped what we would have to pay at $1000. I thought I'd have to go over that, but they stuck to it, and didn't want to split costs for more work that they had originally hoped to get done. Yay! Closing this week, if all goes well.

Nedtellingen har begynt!

The first week of the quarter is over (10 to go, including finals week). We also have a partially renovated bathroom, which is to say a lovely new floor and a new tub surround. It looks exponentially better, and the buyers (who picked out the flooring) are happy. It would have been nice to replace the hideous walls too, but we were really just replacing areas that were water damaged. Here's what it looks like:



Yesterday was the whole house inspection, so that was kind of stressful. I think we're looking at somewhere around $2000 more that we'll have to put into the house. Sigh. But it looks like everything is still good to go. If all goes well, we'll close on or around Halloween, then rent back from the buyers until our departure date of 16 December.

I continue to knit like there's no tomorrow. This time it's the "Lattice Lace Pullover" from Knit So Fine: Designs with Skinny Yarns. I started knitting in too small a size, so I had to rip out about 9 inches and start over in the right size. I'm now back up to about where I was when I started ripping:



Today I also did my first real blocking of a piece of knitting (as opposed to simply steam pressing a piece of knitting). It is so cool. Can't wait to see the dried results tomorrow. It turns out one of the best things to use as a blocking board are the foam alphabet floor mats that most kids, including my own, have. So here's the Ribbon Lace Scarf in all its 73 x 10 inches of glory, with about 14,000 straight pins in it:


Confession: I've been watching a lot of tv lately...

I have now watched two episodes of a new show on Masterpiece Mystery, "The Ruby in the Smoke" and "The Shadow in the North." Now, don't get me wrong. I adore mysteries. I adore period pieces. I especially adore period mysteries. I even totally adore the actor JJ Feild, who stars as the love interest. But I think these are absolutely dreadful! They are so un-Victorian in every way. I appreciate the revisionism in terms of race (the cast is totally "integrated" in a cool way), but the female character is just utterly unbelievable on every level. Wrong, wrong, wrong, as any fan of nineteenth-century England would tell you.

But on the up side of things, KE and I have started a mini Twin Peaks marathon. It turns out CBS.com has all the episodes available on its website. And here's an embarrassing confession: I only saw two or three episodes when it originally came out, and completely missed how fabulously brilliant it is. I am absolutely entranced by it now. We watch about two episodes a night, most evenings. It is so totally absorbing and weirdly familiar. We just watched the episode in season two in which Laura Palmer's killer is revealed (I must be the only person born in 1967 who didn't know who it was). Fascinating. I've skimmed a couple of academic articles on the series, and it sounds like things are about to get really weird. Can't wait!

Forberedelser

Thinking of our move to Norway, whether it takes place in December 2008 or June 2009, is pretty overwhelming. I'm trying to take some steps this summer to get ready:

• The exterior of our house is now painted! Yay! It looks so much better, and for the first time I'm not embarrassed to live here. The guy did a great job. It cost around $2200, which seemed incredibly reasonable for a 1600 square foot house (plus 400 square foot attached garage)
• We have hired a finish carpenter to do some work in the house. The bathroom and master bedroom doors are missing trim, and we need to have the trim around the kitchen floor replaced, and a bunch of other little jobs. These are things that drive us crazy on a subliminal level, and if they're not done I think it will turn off potential buyers. Of course no one (but us) will notice them when they are done, but they really need to be done any way. It will cost about $600
• We have hired an electrician to take care of a whole bunch of nagging little things--including the power strip that the former owners have mounted on an exterior wall! This long list of little electrical things is a bigger job, about $1100
• We have signed up for our neighborhood's big summer yard sale from 25-27 July. It will give us the opportunity to get rid of a bunch of things that we don't want to take with us. We're not planning on storing anything here in the US, so we either take it with us or sell/donate it. That can be a bit overwhelming. Even though I'm a minimalist, we've still accumulated a lot. And this neighborhood sale comes a bit too early--we can't get rid of everything, since we still have 6-12 more months to live here.

Unfortunately, there are even more things that I haven't begun to take concrete action on, even though I've been fretting about them for months:

• Figuring out how to ship belongings overseas. We'd like to get a quote for a standard container of some sort and then just purge our belongings down to what fits, but that doesn't seem to be the way shipping companies work. When I tried to get information they kept asking me "how many rooms" we would be shipping, which seems ridiculous. Doesn't it kind of depend on how big the rooms are and how full of stuff they are?! Give me the height, width, depth, and weight, and I'm okay, but this "room" stuff is totally frustrating.
• Figuring out how to transfer financial assets. Obviously I'm going to let my retirement account sit, but if we get any money out of selling our house (please, please) we'd like to take that money with us. I need to find out any tax implications.
• I think we also need to get some interior painting done in the house to spruce it up a bit before selling. Not sure if it's worth the time/energy expenditure to do it ourselves, or whether we should hire someone.

Hjemmefronten

Among the things that one doesn't think about at first when one decides to up stakes and move overseas is how much time and energy goes into the home that one is leaving. This past month has been filled with tending the home fires, both metaphorically and more literally. We've been doing taxes, visiting elderly relatives, looking at paint samples, and getting bids to have the exterior of our house painted. These tasks have a tendency to strengthen ties rather than make it easier to detach oneself.

I'm really excited to get the exterior painted, and have plans for some small repairs to the interior over the summer. And in the mail today the local neighborhood newsletter announced that a neighborhood-wide garage sale is being planned for July. I am thrilled, and already sent off an email to get involved. It will be a fantastic way to start paring down more of the material goods that are lurking all over the place in our house.

Spring has also arrived here in the Pacific Northwest, and our very large (and very uncouth) yard is starting to pull itself together and start looking pretty again. All those corners that look dismal in the gray, wet winter, are starting to come to life. I think every year when spring comes, KE perks up and starts to reconsider the plan to move back to Norway. Then the summer heat comes along and he starts longing for home again. I'm getting used to his cycles.

But all in all, April is feeling a little strange and unsettling. The nesting instinct is surprisingly strong.