Hodepine

Today I got an email from my new department (I have yet to see a contract or a salary figure!) asking me what class I want to teach in the spring. I guess I thought I might be getting some terms off from teaching, but it's really fine--the array of courses they asked me to choose from were great, and I am just so excited to have the opportunity.

I had quite a knitting dust up over the weekend. I finished nearly every piece of knitting available to me in the house. All that was left was a few scraps of random yarn and a little more of the purple to add to the sleeve on the little gansey for E:

On Saturday, I was really feeling like an addict, and as soon as KE came home from soccer practice I got all ready to go to the yarn store to buy yarn for a new project. Just at the last moment I decided to check the mail, and found that the two new knitting books I had ordered had in fact arrived. Now these are the first new knitting books I've bought in about ten years. I've been doing a ton of reading about knitting recently, both on the internet and from library books. I've determined that my problem over the past few years is that the things I make are almost always the wrong size and are usually too bulky for someone as short as me. Here's a classic example: remember the blue cable sweater I was hoping to finish up? Well I did, and it is absolutely gorgeous and equally absolutely unwearable on me:


Argh! What was I thinking? Could I possibly look any dumpier? This simply must stop (and someone much taller needs this sweater). These two new books that I ordered, Knit So Fine: Designs with Skinny Yarn and Lace Style: Traditional to Innovative, seem to have designs that will be more graceful and flattering.

Sounds good in theory. There is one design in particular that I thought will be perfect, and that I could use the gray yarn I bought in Oslo in June to make (hence avoiding purchasing new yarn)...or so I thought.


Problem is, I can't for the life of me get the gauge right! I tried three or four times Saturday afternoon and evening, then just gave up. On Sunday I biked over to my first knitting circle meeting (how unfortunate--after four years here, I finally hook up with a little group of knitters, only four months before I'm going to leave!). I show them the gauge problems and we determine that there's only one thing to do: go to a yarn store. With my bike thrown into the back of someone's Subaru (what else here in Eugene?!) we head to one, only to find it closed, and then, like addicts, head out across town to another. I can almost feel the fix when I see the lighted neon open sign.

Although I usually avoid salespeople like the plague I consult intensely, pattern in hand, and of course end up buying the most expensive yarn I've ever purchased in my entire life. Shellshocked, I get it home and completely neglect my family while I try to cast on the sweater. Much to my horror, I discover that I'm having exactly the same gauge problems as with the gray yarn (which, as I believed all along, is a comparable fingering weight yarn, both to what the pattern requires and what the yarn store suggested I substitute). I call the yarn store. They tell me to knit a swatch (something I never do). I knit the swatch and take E with me in the car to the store (he did great--they have toys in a corner). The two salespeople spend about 20 minutes measuring and remeasuring, looking at the pattern, and they can't understand the problem. My knitting tension looked fine, the lace pattern I was working looked identical to the picture, the yarn was right, by process of elimination the needles should have been right, but the piece was way wider than it should have been.

I am in the queue for Ravelry (the amazing internet knitting resource center) and am really anxious to see if anyone else has had the same problem. I have been knitting since I was 12 or 13 and have never had this happen. I'm totally stumped.

So in the meantime, I went back to the original plan, which was to make another rolled-edge lambswool sweater like my red one out of the gray Rauma lammull:

Such a let down after doing some practice on the fun lattice lace pattern I was hoping to knit, but at least it goes incredibly fast, and I know it will fit and be flattering. Here it is after two days of knitting, photographed against my Grannie's quilt to create more interest:


It's so boring that I decided to order some Garnstudio yarn online (Nordic Mart is their US distributor). Garnstudio has an website full of interesting free patterns. The first successful sweater I knitted way back when I was a high school exchange student was a Garnstudio pattern, so it's kind of a nostalgia thing (I'm way into nostalgia these days, as anyone perusing my Facebook photo albums can attest).

And I now have one frighteningly expensive ball of acid green alpaca yarn (I was able to return the rest, thank goodness). Luckily, it's just the right amount for a pair of socks or a snood or something, but I think I just need to let it sit out of sight for a while while I get over the whole episode!

Nerver, del 2

We met with our trusted realtor yesterday and had a pest and dry rot inspection done today in preparation for selling the house. Kind of bad news, but nothing I wasn't expecting. We'll have to put some money into the bathroom and a few other things, and will try to have the house on the market by the end of September. We will probably only be able to sell it for what we bought it for, which is a bummer, since we put a lot of money into repairs over the past three years. Ah well, as they say, "easy come, easy go" and "its only money."

Meanwhile I'm actually sleeping really well, which is odd, since I have insomniac tendencies. I attribute that to two things: watching the Democratic National Convention each night this week (snore) and continuing to knit like a maniac. If I weren't knitting right now, I'm sure I'd be chain smoking. There is just so much that we need to get taken care of.

I just took pictures of this week's worth of knitting. Here it is:

Last night I finally completed the finish work on the little setesdalkofte. It turned out pretty well -- all I had to do was the edging around the opening and weave in the loose yarn ends. I decided I couldn't be bothered to make buttonholes. I don't really think it needs any buttons, but the very first think KE asked was whether I was going to put some on. I guess I could find some kind of nice hook clasps...

This is the stripy sweater I started on the Bend trip. The goal was to use up my stash of random colors of Rauma finull, and I actually got through most of it. I decided to control the wildness by making an all black yoke, and will have to buy more black yarn for the sleeves. I'm pretty excited about this project. I haven't designed my own sweater pattern for years and years. I used to do that all the time in high school. It's size is calculated based on a pattern for a sweater for an 8-year-old, so there's no time pressure to finish it...


Today I decided to knit a preemie beanie for a little girl named Beatrice. She is the granddaughter of my mother's best friend. It went so easily and quickly that I went ahead and knitted two. I kind of had to wing it, using the leftover Dale babygarn that I used for the setesdalkofte and the classic strawberry cap hat pattern I've had for years. I have no idea if it's the right size. How small is a preemie? Hard to imagine.

A couple of days ago I started really exploring the knitting resources available on the internet, and discovered cowls, snoods, neckwarmers, whatever you want to call them. There are dozens of patterns, but I tried to make up my own. This is made from some leftover Peer Gynt worsted weight yarn. Probably not soft enough for a cowl, and a little wonky and weird, but oh well....


Now I've started on a scarf using more left overs...

Nerver

Forgot to add this picture of what I was working on over the weekend to keep my nerves in check as I waited for the final word. I knew there was a meeting on Friday to decide who got the position, and that I probably wouldn't hear until today. This will be a sweater for E. It's for a size 8 kid, roughly, and is just using up various leftovers of Rauma finull. No pattern, just fun.

Og svaret er ... JA

Yee haw! I got an email this morning saying I had been chosen for the postdoctoral research position I applied for at the University of Oslo! I couldn't be more delighted!

This job makes everything so much easier for my family in the long run, even though it will be a stressful four months getting ready for the move in December or January. Just the thought of making a better life for KE (who's homesick) and E (who'll grow up in a much more humane and kid-friendly society than here) and keeping my career going seems too good to be true.

I love where we'll be moving to and I already have a handful of people in the department there whom I know, respect, and really like. I'm sure there will be all sorts of frustrations. The commute will be long (but even that is still going to be on public transportation). I'm sure I'll miss living here in the Pacific Northwest. I'm anxious about moving into such a small house. But all in all I think the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages.

I still haven't received any specific details about the position: little details like salary, work permit, travel allowances, start date, etc., have yet to be revealed. Meanwhile, I'll start working on trying to figure out what to do to get us out of this house and moved from here, and I'll try to actually let it sink in that I just hit the job jackpot! I'm sure there will be a feeding frenzy of qualified applicants for my current job too. It's nice to know I'll be able to leave things in good hands.

Ah, happiness!

Strikkedilla

I'm finally in full vacation mode after the school year and the interview. And what, pray tell, does Kverulantinnen do when she relaxes? She knits like a maniac!

First off this summer was a little sweater for E for the coming winter. I bought the yarn (Rauma Finull) in Oslo, even though I had vowed not to buy more yarn until my stash is depleted (that's what we all say).

Next, as a pathetic attempt to deplete that stash, I sorted through my two big plastic bins of craft stuff, giving away quite a bit, and then figuring out what projects I could complete with the good stuff. I discovered that I have enough Rauma 3-tråd yarn to make most of a classic islender sweater for KE. The next time I'm in Norway I'll have to buy a few skeins of the two contrasting colors in order to make the sleeves, but I'm surprised that I had this much!

And of course there's the blue yarn waiting to be knit up into a Calvin Klein cabled polo neck sweater from an ancient issue of Vogue Knitting. On and off over the past year I finished the back and started on the front, but there's still a long way to go. I don't really like the yarn that much (Nature Spun worsted weight). It's too soft and fuzzy compared to the harder Norwegian yarn that I love.

I also have a sweet little baby setesdal cardigan originally intended for E (three and a half years ago) that only has some finishing work left to do. It's made out of Dale babygarn:

Then the plan is to use up more of my stash (the in my mind infamous purple yarn, more Rauma 3-tråd) on a classic English gansay from an old book on knitting in the British Isles that I've had forever. It will be in a larger child's size that E can use in a year or two - mostly just so that I can use up as much of the yarn as possible, without needing to buy more (which I would have to do were I to make an adult size).

In Oslo I also bought (shame, shame) some really, really fine gray lambswool (also Rauma; can you tell I'm a major fan?) that is going to be my treat for knitting in the fall. It will be the plainest of raglan curled-cuff and neck sweaters. I've already knitted the same thing in red and remember it taking a shockingly long time to knit for being a straight stockinette project.

And finally, I have pieced together a knitting needle caddy (the fabric roll kind) with part of my fabric stash, and will sew it up whenever I remember to borrow my mother's sewing machine. It was a fun project to figure out (I did a lot of searching for patterns on the internet), and if it turns out I'll make it into a tutorial here (I plan to take pictures of each step of the construction).

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.

Kjæledyr

In my social circles, children are optional and pets are sacred. I don't think I know anyone who isn't a devoted pet owner. It often appears to be a point of pride for my friends that they value animals more than people. I don't have a pet.

I had a psychotic cat named Nimbus for something like seven years. I adopted him from a horrible animal control shelter when he was a kitten. He was violent and did not tolerate other cats (although he appeared somewhat fascinated by dogs). When I married KE he tried valiantly for over a year to live with the horrible allergies that Nimbus produced in him. He tried to make friends and adjust to the cat's wild spells. Our son was born and neither of us fully trusted Nimbus with him. The cat was too violent and too unpredictable--biting and clawing me was one thing, biting and clawing an infant quite another. Finally, we came to the realization that Nimbus was making our lives miserable. We took him to a no-kill shelter and hoped for the best. The story doesn't have a happy ending. I never tried to find out what happened to him. I just sent him out there into the universe. Certain people around me were shocked. My getting rid of Nimbus was an affront and a betrayal of their value system.

My dirty little secret is that life without a pet is exponentially better. I'm relieved not to have another life dependent upon me. I'm relieved that we can travel without significant logistical cat-care planning. I'm relieved not to have the pet chores and extra costs. My child, my spouse, and my job take almost everything out of me. I haven't got anything left for the needs of a pet.

On a discussion board I frequent the topic of how evil people who give up their pets are occasionally resurfaces. It did again this week, and prompted a rush of guilt. I know that pets are supposed to be a lifetime commitment. But so are marriages, parenting, friendships, all sorts of things that change over time. I couldn't live up to that commitment with Nimbus. I failed him. It was a sacrifice I chose to make for my new life as a spouse and parent.

One thing that haunts me: when I moved in with KE he knew I loved cats, and as a kind of odd symbolic gesture he took in a stray kitten. Since she was a short hair and lived mostly outside, he didn't have as much of an allergic reaction to her. We had her spayed and then arranged that the people who rented our house would take care of her. Confession: I desperately hope that they take her with them when we move back. I don't want her. I would only resent her. I had to give up a cat I truly loved, and I just don't want the hassle of caring for a cat with whom I have no relationship. If I can't have Nimbus I don't want any pets at all. I mentioned this to KE and he just thinks its spiteful. It probably is.