Skolevalg

I watched the third presidential debate tonight. Actually, I watched it twice--once live and once on PBS. There are dozens of issues I could raise, such as McCain calling people who support choice "pro-abortion," or Obama's failed and repeated attempts to equate McCain and Bush, which I find really irritating. But the thing that struck me the most was actually the discussion of education.

I was finally able to put my finger on what bothers me about McCain's position of "school choice." His entire education policy is based on giving parents a choice in where to send their children. What he doesn't say is that his competition-based model for education is based on the assumption that somehow everyone will be able to put their kids in the "good" schools through vouchers. But what happens to the bad schools? And how can the good schools meet the demand, even just in terms of logistics, especially given that class size is a crucial element in improving student performance? It's a Lake Wobegon approach to education, in which all the schools are somehow going to be above average, and in my view it's totally unrealistic.

Oh, and here's the really important part. This is what I was knitting during the debate:
It's the free scarf pattern "Japanske bølger" that a Danish raveler published. I decided to use the wildly popular Japanese yarn, Noro Kureyon sock yarn, which I got for $11 (using a 40% off coupon to bring down the price). People rave on and on about it, but I actually pretty much hate the yarn. It's single ply, so it gets all twisted, and it is exceptionally scratchy. The thickness varies from sewing thread to worsted weight yarn, which to me just seems sloppy, even though I know it's on purpose. The variegation in colors also includes a bright electric blue, but I've been taking it out as I go along as I wanted a more subdued scarf. So now you know!

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!

Don't heckle the hekler

I need a purse. I had a very expensive leather Coach purse that I carried for about 5 years. I kind of liked it, but not really since the straps always slid off my shoulder. It started getting worn looking, and I jettisoned it during part of my decluttering this summer for our move I had a great crocheted basic sac thing that I always used for travel since it was light weight and easy to pack, but that has disappeared. I have an ancient (I bought it when I was 16!) small leather purse that I can't quite fit enough in. So, I need a purse. I decided that I could possibly crochet enough to make one for myself. I started out trying to make one out of "grannie squares," and it was a disaster. It turns out one of the fundamental things I enjoy about knitting and the like is the continuous process of knitting (or crocheting) a long strand. Both grannie squares and the knitted mitred squares that some people use (I also tried that) entail all the things I don't really like about knitting, and very little of what I actually like. I was about to give up, but then I found this! It is the exact duplicate of the great travel purse I have misplaced, and what's more, it is super fun to make! It's just one continuous spiral of 50 rows of single crochet stitch in a big loop. I, who thought I couldn't crochet, am actually having fun and making an acceptable creation. It's so cool, and I'm so excited!

We have accepted the bid on the house and it's in escrow now! Yay! It was low I suppose (2% less than what we paid in 2005), but all things considered, I think we're very lucky to have an offer, especially even before we officially put the house on the market. We'll be doing the transaction without a realtor. We really like the couple who wants to buy the house. Here's hoping it all goes through...

P.S. Note to self: in honor of the upcoming season of Survivor, I'd really like to get myself one of these, the "pre-pixelated t-shirt produced by Ironic Sans.

Bikube ... eller vepsebol?

I know how I feel about the political policies of John McCain and Sarah Palin. I oppose their solutions on nearly all issues: the economy, social justice, reproductive rights, and foreign policy.

I don't, however, know what to think about Sarah Palin's hairdo, or its eerie similarity to Cindy McCain's. Why are both women sporting beehive updos? What is that supposed to signify?




Here's a link to one analysis published in the Boston Herald. But all it offers is a critique of the style itself, not a questioning of what signal the Republicans are trying to get across. US Magazine reports here that the look is intended to downplay her physical attractiveness and get people to take her seriously. My theory is that its a kind of homage to the early cold war period. And also, it's a way of dealing with fine, limp hair (something I have intimate and extensive knowledge of...). Kind of like: control your hair = control the world ???

Framskritt

It feels like things are starting to happen quickly here, and I'm feeling a little anxious even though things are going well. Here's what's happening on the house front:

1. We paid to have some interior painting done on the house. It really needed it, and it was niggly work that I just wasn't up for doing myself.

2. We found a contractor to do the repairs called for on the pest & dry rot inspection we had done on the house.

3. KE has been working like a horse on cleaning up the yard. He is a machine when he gets going!

4. We may be getting an offer on the house from some friends of friends! She called this afternoon to say they wanted to make an offer and wanted to do it before we list the house with a realtor.

On the moving to Norway front:

1. I actually did get the contract from the University of Oslo. It's now signed and on its way back. It was good to get everything in writing and squared away. And heck, the fact that the salary is $15,000 more a year than I make here doesn't hurt either!

2. We bought our (one way -- egads!) plane tickets! We're leaving the US on 16 December.

3. KE already gave notice to both sets of renters in our duplex in Norway. One side has asked if they could move out early because the date we suggested was during their exam period. KE cut them an extremely generous deal. The family that lives in the other unit hasn't responded yet, which is a bit odd.

4. We've been getting bids on moving our stuff. It's kind of weird. The companies send out agents who walk through the house looking at your stuff. They then say how big of a container they think you'll need and then a few days later you get a bid. It's expensive. As in exhorbitant. I've always though of myself as a minimialist, but of course I'm really not once you start really looking in drawers and closets and bookcases. This move is really going to put me to the test. I'm going to have to liquidate a lot of things that I have a pretty strong attachment to. It's making me really anxious, but at the same time I'm a bit exhilerated at the prospect of whittling down my possessions so much.

On the home front there's not much to report. I have another free week before orientation starts. E has a runny nose. I'm still knitting like a madwoman: close to finishing the gray sweater and also a scarf... My big discover is Ravelry. I just can't get enough of searching and poking around on this online knitting community. It is mindblowingly absorbing. Imagine Facebook, but with every single person on it sharing one and the same passion with you. Really fun, and outrageously geeky.

Utrolig. Helt utrolig.

One of my former students just sent me this link. I am utterly speechless.

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!