Kjepphest

I have only ever used the Norwegian word kjepphest in its figurative meaning: "a consuming interest, obsession" according to Einar Haugen's dictionary. For some reason I hadn't registered the more literal meaning of "hobby horse" until it was brought up at the parents' meeting at E's school. They were going to have a knights' ceremony where the second graders were to dress up and get knighted by the 10th graders, and each kid needed a cape, a sword, and a hobby horse.

KE made a cool sword out of some scrap wood, and I had already made a cape last year for Halloween, so the only thing left was the hobby horse (odd that we had never gotten him one before). Here's what I came up with last night:

The nose and mouth are embroidered. The mane is just scrap yarn. I hand stitched everything and used some old batting I had left over from something or another to fill it. It was an effort to make, not because it was difficult, but because I've been feverish for the past two days. I'm actually kind of pleased with the result. It certainly fits in with the Waldorf school aesthetic!

Det sømmer seg

This was a hard week. I was feeling pretty down, and the whole household was fairly cranky, plus I had to inflict oral exams on my students, with more to come next week. Let me just say how much I despise assigning grades, on principle. I especially hate doing it face to face. Shudder. Only three more days.

I got most of my bad mood worked out this morning over breakfast, and am feeling like I can face the world again now (though I did eat an entire package of Pringles as my "lunch" while reading a MA thesis today, so it's not like I'm all that functional...).

I had to send off a FedEx package to the US today, and it turns out the only place that accepts them is Mailboxes Etc. in downtown Oslo, and since I had to get it dropped off before three o'clock, I left work early and did some shopping. I bought a guide to San Francisco. We'll be staying there for three days on our way to Eugene. I'm so excited to show E and KE around, since neither of them have been there before, and my mouth is positively watering over the prospect of decent Asian food again. Finally. It has been far too long. I would say Asian food is hands down the thing I miss the most about the US.

I also acquired a new helper. Meet Jack, my (seam) ripper:

Notice the little droplet of blood on the spike (kidding, really). For some reason my sewing machine didn't come with one of these, so I finally remembered to stop by Sømsenteret and pick one up. I'm thrilled with it (and very easily amused). I didn't know what it was called in Norwegian so I had to ask, and it's a sprettekniv, not to be confused with a sprettkniv, which turns out to be a variant of springkniv, which is to say a switchblade. Glad to get that terminology sorted out.

I immediately started ripping out the seams of some linen clothes I have that don't fit very well. I thought I might be able to use the fabric to make some of the projects in Akiko Mano's Linen Wool Cotton, which finally arrived the other day:

I have been letting my plans to do more machine sewing peter out, but I'm hoping the arrival of this book will get me started again. In the meantime, though, I'm still plodding away at the Bridgewater shawl. I'm still really enjoying knitting the central square, though it got caught on something, leaving a gaping, sickening hole that I'm not sure I can ever fully repair.

Første forsøk

Look! I sewed something and it didn't turn into a disaster. Thrilling! This is Simplicity pattern 9949 view G, using the same unbleached Ikea linen that I apparently use for all sewing projects. It turns out that my machine doesn't have a zipper foot, so I had to sew the zipper in by hand, but otherwise this was all (well, "all" is probably a stretch. There was a total of 9 very short seams) done on my machine and I don't think I swore once. There are some problems with it, but it does give me hope that I will someday be able to machine sew. I'm just going to keep plugging away at small "low impact" projects like this made out of fabric I have lying around. I cut out the pieces for another one of these, and I'll just try to do better on the things I messed up on this one.

I didn't make any fused plastic today because the weather was cold and sleety, and thus not conducive to working with open doors and windows. In the afternoon the sun came out though, so I was able to take some pictures, including the finished and blocked ripple blanket:

Bold, no? I still have loads of 10 colors of this yarn (Garnstudio Drops Alpaca) left over. I'm contemplating making a granny square afghan out of it, since that's easy and very portable. I've started looking around on Flickr and Ravelry trying to figure out what granny square aesthetic appeals to me. They're so incredibly varied, and some are astoundingly ugly. I was thinking maybe I should make hexagonal blocks rather than squares. Clearly not sure of what I want to do here, so I'll let the yarn marinate. Now it's back to the lace curtain, which feels a bit like a chore. Only about 10 cm to go, I think, so there actually is an end in sight, even though it doesn't feel like it. Can't wait to cast on for a new sweater as soon as it's done. Right now I'm thinking it will be another Miss Honeychurch (in the blue Garnstudio Drops Lin that I bought last spring), though that is obviously very subject to change.

Our social adventure last night turned out to be a good experience for all. E and his auntie appeared to really bond. AK said she had fun with E, and he was totally at ease spending the night at her house. KE and I had a nice time at the dinner party we were invited to. It was a very academic crowd, and even though it was at a colleague's home I'm not sure I really got any closer to getting to really know them any better. But given that this is Norway, it was a huge breakthrough just to be invited, and it was a lovely evening. The whole event feels like a milestone in our family dynamics. We got off the bus at midnight along with a neighbor, who remarked with surprise that she certainly wasn't used to seeing us out at that time of night.

Grinebiter

The people I most admire are the ones who are able to rise above every day frustrations with serenity, humor and kindness. I am not one of those people. I've been cranky for most of the day. Sometimes I get so filled up with irritation that I just want to spit, or pinch someone hard: having to do things over again, forgetting things, spending money unnecessarily, people who stand right in front of the doors on the subway so I can't get out, ice on the sidewalks, the smell of smoke in my office, the list goes on and on. I don't really have anything to say about this other that, hey, I'm grumpy today. Proceed with caution.

But actually, the small non-grumpy part of my personality is doing okay. I helped a colleague with something today and I think it was really appreciated. Despite spending a lot of time on that I still got some work done on the Frobenius article and cranked through four or five tedious tasks that needed doing. I still have more tedious stuff (it never ends) and some big things too--like US federal income taxes--but at least I'm not drowning in it all like I sometimes feel.

I also picked up that extra skein of black yarn for the baby blanket, so I'll probably finally finish that in the next day or two. Then it's lace curtain knitting until I reach 120 cm or have a stroke, whichever comes first. I think right now I'm at about 97 cm. I have so many potential projects flying around in my head that It's dizzying, but I so want to have the experience of having no project in process, if only for a day. It's good discipline, if nothing else.

Given how many times I've strained my hands and wrists this winter with knitting and crocheting, I'm starting to give some serious thought to what I could occupy myself with if this becomes chronic. My immediate thought is that a life without handwork would be hard to maintain. For whatever reason, I am hardwired to make things. I don't have any particular need for artistic expression, but I do need to be constructing things, and preferably things that serve a practical purpose. Reading or other quiet leisure activities are fine, but they're not a viable substitute, since there's no material end product (plus I read for a living, which makes it less appealing as a leisure activity).

I've decided that machine sewing would be the logical skill to start building up. I have written before here about how stressed out machine sewing makes me. I hate feeling so incompetent and at the mercy of a machine. I have the same kind of irrational tunnel vision about a sewing machine that some people have about computers. I get nervous just looking at it, and that means that I get erratic, instantly furious, and absurdly incompetent as soon as I try to start sewing. It is not pretty. Yet at the same time, I love the idea of sewing clothes and other practical items. I love the look of tidy seams and exactly the right fabrics and colors, but nothing I've ever sewn on a machine has ever turned out right.

So I was poking around on Amazon looking at some of the sewing books that get mentioned on the blogs I follow, and I discovered one book that looks different from the rest. It's incredibly minimalist and, well, very Japanese. The book is Linen, Wool, Cotton: 25 Simple Projects to Sew with Natural Fabrics by Akiko Mano. Despite totally hating the project on the front cover, it looks like there are many things that I would like to make. There's a preview of many pages of the book here so you can check it out yourself. Some of the projects are so simple that it's embarrassing that I would need a book to teach me how to make them, but honestly I'm so incompetent that I need the most remedial projects imaginable to practice on--things like kitchen towels and handkerchiefs that are literally just rectangles!

Putekrig

I write this on my laptop at our new kitchen table! It's so lovely to have one that fits the space we have to work with, finally. It took a long day of furniture shopping, a session combing www.finn.no, and a long drive to some guy's house to get it. We ended up with a very plain oiled oak table from IKEA, purchased used for half the price. It looks like this:
Like I said, very plain! We don't have new chairs yet, so at the moment we're just using some old mismatched ones that don't look all that great. We're kind of thinking about buying four of these, though we're not sure yet (that's light blue, not white):

In the meantime, KE was very kind and oiled and tinkered with the sewing machine until he got it to work flawlessly, so I was able to pick up the great outdoor pillow/cushion project again (without trauma, even!). I got three of the five slipcovers sewn and one of the two patchwork pillows sewn. Well, that's not entirely true--the machine seams are done and I need to whipstitch the openings on all of them. For right now, this gives a hint of what it will look like:

And here's a before shot of the cushions that KE bought a decade ago. The fabric is starting to rot and the foam is coming out. Time to cover them up, dontcha think?!


Still working on the Gathered Pullover. One sleeve done, the other half done. I have knit past the cable pattern and have divided the front and back at the armholes. I'm working on the back while I mull over how much higher I want to start the neck opening at the front.

Avledet

You would think I would practically have finished the gathered pullover, since it is such a quick knit (and I have indeed come pretty far) but you would be wrong.

No, I suddenly got it into my head that I simply had to make a patchwork pillow case for our outdoor furniture. We have a pretty solid table, chairs and sofa that we use all the time. The set is about 15 years old, as are the cushions. Unfortunately the cushions are really starting to wear, and I planned to cover them with the same unbleached linen that I bought at IKEA for our living room curtains. Even more unfortunately, it turns out our sewing machine (which has been in storage since 2004) isn't feeling very good, so my attempt to sew up the very simple slipcovers for the cushions was foiled. Yet another of my attempts to sew with a machine fails!

I've been looking at all the patchwork pillows that Alicia Paulson makes on Posie Gets Cozy and thinking "I can do that." After all my Grannie showed me years ago how to do simple patchwork square. And so I did:

I sewed them together by hand. I'm going to make a simple back out of the same unbleached linen that the cushions will (eventually, when I fix the machine) be covered with. It was fun and easy, so I'll probably make another.

Yesterday evening we had the end-of-the-schoolyear party for E's preschool. We had a picnic at Hellviktangen (the best local beach). Everyone brought their own dinner, but shared cakes, and the kids ran around, waded in the fjord, and fished for crabs. The preschool teachers had put togther big folders of all the kids' artwork and distributed them ceremoniously, like a diploma. Those kids were so proud! All of them, E included, sat right down to look at their own art and show it to their parents. Very fun, especially when the folder is almost as big as E himself!


ETA: The geraniums bloomed. And the color is.... RED for both of them. Despite being a red-hater, I'm surprisingly cheered by them:

Traumatisk julekalender

I made a quilted advent calendar over the weekend. It almost killed me. As soon as it is light enough to take pictures, I'll post some.

What I learned in the process:

1. I hate, abhore, despise, loath, and cannot abide sewing on a sewing machine. Clearly I need to take lessons.
2. Applique quilting is not for me. I am a perfectionist and completely incompetent with a sewing machine (see point 1), and the end result is not even close to satisfactory. Quilting is all about the surface, and if the surface sucks so does the quilt.
   
3. I learned how to do a quilt binding, which has mystified me for years. That part was actually fun. I have an old baby quilt that's all done except for the binding, and I could actually imagine finishing that. Even on a machine.
   
4. I really like hand sewing. That feels almost like knitting.
   
5. I should only sew when I'm alone in the house. Anything else is disastrous.

The problem here is that I would actually really like to be able to sew on a machine--both clothing and quilts--but the learning curve seems insurmountable. I see things on the internet like Posie gets cozy's studio, and all I want to do is whip out lovely, whimsical sewn items left and right, while surrounded by bolts and scraps of delicious fabric. Logic tells me I should be able to sew as well as I can knit, and I can't figure out why that isn't the case. Sewing has always stressed me out. I did it a fair amount as a kid and took a sewing unit in home economics class in middle school. But whereas yarn often succumbs to my will, fabric almost never does.

So, here is the overall view of my julekalender:

And now, in the interest of full disclosure, I am providing a close up of the horribly wonky stitching around stocking number 10. This is really embarrassing, and it's not like it's an outlyer. They're nearly all that bad. I guess it proves the depths of my narcissism (a problem with blogging in general...) that I would even upload this picture:

Here's what I should have been making. I found it at Den gode feen's blog. I sincerely hope it's okay to copy in the image here--this project photo is buried in a posting with a huge number of other fabulous holiday decorations, so it's kind of hard to find. She does beautiful work:

This I think I could have handled, and I love the combination of monocromatic patterns. I love monochromatic things in general... Cool idea to make a bunch of bags--can't wait to see how the whole project turns out. I also would have been thrilled with the advent calendar posted at the Purl Bee just a couple of days after I bought and cut out the material for mine. Sigh.

After all that sewing trauma and accompanying high blood pressure, I quickly retreated to the safe haven of my knitting (the hourglass sweater that I'm affectionately calling my frijoles refritos sweater--don't you think it looks like refried beans?). We even had some glorious sunshine. The balance in my life was thankfully regained:

Ahhh. Relief.

Svett

I am pushing the envelope, which is to say attempting a sewing project. Today I started the cloth advent calendar that I want to make for E, and initially I though "how hard can it be?" I think that about all sewing projects. Usually that gets me through the cutting phase, and then the thought of setting up the sewing machine is usually too overwhelming, so I just let the project lie dormant until I throw it away five or ten years later. Or else I do actually try to sew, and it always ends up sloppy and disappointing.

But I'm really motivated on this one, because I'm hoping that it can be a little anchor point in a few chaotic weeks, maybe just as much for me as for E. I've been casing the local quilt stores to see what they have, and today I went in for the kill. I was a nervous wreck. I actually produced that rank sweat that only nervousness brings forth. My brain froze up, and I just couldn't envision the way the fabrics would go together at all. It was really weird, as I usually have pretty clear notions of what I'm after aesthetically when it comes to yarn, paint, and even clothes. I finally had to have an employee talk me through my nerves. You could tell she thought I was an idiot, but I'm trying to suppress the memory of that.

After an eternity of looking through the greens and reds and Christmas prints I finally came up with a combination and brought it up to the counter to be cut. I was all dithery and wondered aloud if they would go together. With great comic timing she looked blankly at me and said "They're all green and red. Of course they go together." Argh. I felt even more moronic. But really, all the greens and reds don't necessarily go together.

So, I spent some time this afternoon while E was at preschool cutting out 24 little Christmas stockings. It was a mentally and emotionally exhausting experience. After E went to bed I hunkered down in front of the tv with the old rillejakke project. Ah, what comfort to knit and watch bad tv (House and Fringe for those who must know)...