Strikkekrise!!!

Whimper. I am so sad. I have been happily knitting away at the last part of the rillejakke (the right front) for the past two or three days. But this morning when I got it out and started measuring I realized that the whole dang piece is wrong! I just ripped the entire thing out. Sigh.

I have to confess that I got a little seduced by Brooklyntweed's frequent praise of the garter stitch. He goes on and on about how rhythmic and soothing it is to knit in garter stitch (knit every row, as opposed to knit and purl subsequent rows for you non-knitters). One person's comfort is apparently another person's torture. I've never really done anything in garter stich other than this jacket, and I didn't realize how much harder it is to correct than regular stockinette knitting, and how impossible it is to measure. Impossible, that is, unless you actually count the rows that are formed by the stitch pattern. Lo and behold, you actually can count them, which I discovered this morning. So now all the misshapen work is ripped out, but I'm too wary to start right in again. Again, sigh. I so wanted to have this thing done. Feels like I've been working on it forever.

On the up side of things, yesterday I finished off some major adminstrative stuff at work, which freed me up to start thinking about my next conference paper, which is going to be on Henrik Ibsen's Når vi døde vågner. Here's a sketch of the first act that Ibsen made in his manuscript:


I actually managed to bang out about four pages! The conference isn't until the end of April, but we're reading that play in my "space and place in literature" seminar this coming week, and I wanted to present a preliminary version of the conference paper to the students on Wednesday. I've really been focusing on the nuts and bolts of literary scholarship and publishing, and I wanted to give them a good model for an academic presentation.

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)...

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!

Urolig

I woke up with a start from a terrible dream. In real life our neighbors across the street have had two loose dogs since we moved in. In the past couple of weeks they have also acquired what appears to be a pit bull. They are also allowing this dog to run totally loose. I dreamed--of course--that it mauled E. Horrible and terrifying. It made me feel like we can't leave this place soon enough.

But on the other hand, it feels so surreal that we will be leaving in a month! I have been having flashes of emotion--not sure whether to call them panic, anticipation, excitement, or what. I think that at least on some level I've wanted to move to Europe (and Norway in particular) for good since I was a teenager. It never appeared possible to stay for anything but limited stints, even after I married a Norwegian citizen, oddly enough. I always dismissed the thought as impossible. And now, suddenly with this postdoctoral position, it's happening! I am emigrating. I don't know why, in all the flurry of the job search and preparing for the move this fact has never struck me before. My identity will shift to that of an expatriate, rather than just a sojourner abroad.

I guess I've felt all along that my primary motivation for the move has been A) KE's desire to return home, and B) what I perceive of as a better society for E to grow up in. I know that I can do okay in Norway, since I've lived there for what amounts to a little over five years, spread out over many stays varying from eight weeks to two years. I guess I really haven't had time to think about this in terms of my own trajectory in life. My feeling this week has been an intense set of gratitude for the opportunity (along with the panic). I don't know if that means that I've really wanted this for myself all along (but somehow didn't/couldn't acknowledge it) or whether my pragmatic nature just worked out an attitude shift. If I'm really, really, really honest, I think when KE and I first started discussing moving to Norway, and even after I agreed to the move, I still sort of secretly harbored a hope that we would decide not to when the time came. It's funny to look back at that.

I guess I feel that my future here in this town, this house, this job, would be really pretty bleak. I have been happy here, but only in the company of my immediate family--husband, son, mother. The satisfaction and challenges I have received from my job have been fleeting and could be found in a different work setting. And I have been terribly, terribly lonely here in terms of developing friendships. I seem to go in cycles. If I look back at my moves and the social networks that I develop, it appears that every other major move produces good social networks:

1. left home for college -- humiliatingly awkward attempts, no lasting friendships from that time
2. moved to go to graduate school -- developed real, lasting friendships who are still my closest and most beloved friends
3. Fulbright to Norway and then a year of teaching -- again humiliatingly awkward
4. postdoc. in Finland -- sort of in between -- one good friend and some good professional contacts (a temporary thing, so it doesn't really count)
5. job in Arizona -- a wonderful network of friends (in a place I hated and a horrible job)
(5a. sabbatical in Norway -- this doesn't really count either since I met KE within the first week, and subsequently spent nearly all my time developing a relationship with him. I did strengthen some relationships with people I knew from before, though)
6. job in Oregon -- again humiliatingly awkward

Case in point on my inability to relate: The other night I saw the most ridiculous thing on Fox TV's new FBI drama "Fringe" (a show that attempts to be cool and freaky like "The X-Files" and fails miserably). The lead character went to Germany to interview a prisoner incarcerated in--get this--Wissenschaft Prison. Yeah right! It's almost as bad as the absurd episode of "The X-Files" that took place in Norway and featured a certain "Mr. Trondheim." Here's a screen shot to prove it:

So, I got all excited and thought, "Hey this is something my colleagues in German will find amusing, so I'll email it to all of them." Silence. Only one person even mentioned it out of the 10 colleagues I said hello to yesterday. Oh well, I still find it hilarious.

Og det motsatte er ... motivert!

After another whinging post, I feel the need to say that things really got better after I got that blasted søknad om oppholds- og arbeidstillatelse thingy into the mail. Since I was applying both for a work permit and residence permit for me and for a personnummer for my son it was a frighteningly thick packet I sent off by Fedex Monday night. Then to top it off I actually finally made plane reservations to take E down to visit my Dad in New Mexico before we leave and called my Dad on the phone to tell him (I despise talking on the phone). Phew.

It has also helped that after quite a few days of dreary rain we had glorious sun and warmth today. E ran around in the leaves like a wild child, looking oh so photogenic. As soon as I get my laptop back from repairs I'll upload pictures of his frolic.

Getting the application and reservations out of my hair freed me up to take on the next big task, which is figuring out how to ship things to Norway. Today I think we settled on a shipping company and have a firm price and details. $1500 to ship a container that is approximately 4' x 4' x 7 ' (about 40 medium sized plastic bins). The company will come to our house with the container and load it up with our (already packed) bins, and whisk it all away. We'll (supposedly) see the stuff again in 8 weeks when we pick it up at Oslo harbor. So I think we're going to use the weekend before the flight to pack (that way both KE and I will be done with finals) and have them come on Monday the 15th to remove our earthly possessions. We'll clean out the house, then spend the last night at my Mom's house, before flying out on Tuesday the 16th.

In knitting news I'm still working on dish cloths rather than my blue rillejakke, for some inexplicable reason.

I am also contemplating a new sewing project. It occured to me that E is old enough to enjoy an Advent calendar, and that having one might help him to understand all the events that are coming up in December (trip to New Mexico, E's birthday, the move, then Christmas). I found a pretty simple idea that I can tweak here. Not totally sure I can pull it off, but KE was relatively enthusiastic, so maybe he will help?

Demotivert

This was a hard weekend for me, not because I did anything at all (I didn't), but because my lack of motivation and direction started to get me down. There have been a couple of tasks I desperately needed to accomplish, and I had put them off every day for over a week. These are things that need to be done right away, crucial things that pertain to our move, yet for some reason I couldn't bring myself to do them. I've been incredibly cranky, and have picked some really stupid fights (well not fights, but totally unnecessary spats over minutia) with poor, long suffering KE.

Finally, after a long talk with a very sympathetic KE, I got him to promise to nag (or shame) me into doing them yesterday. My prime motivation was the fact that there was a one-day-only yarn sale at one of the local shops. I know that's pathetic, but it took rewarding me with a trip to the shop to get me to do what I had to do. Unfortunately, the trip didn't turn out as fun as I would have liked. I had E with me, and a few minutes into browsing he peed his pants. Sigh. Toddlerdom.

What I did manage to buy was good old Sugar 'n' Cream for making dishcloths like these, only in off white. Very satisifying knitting, I must say, and the dishcloth it produces is really cool.


Otherwise, I'm slowly progressing on the "rillejakke." I have the peplum and back done, and have started on one of the fronts. It's starting to get awkward since it's all knitted together rather than sewn together at the end:


I got my package of buttons from the McCain campaign the other day (still waiting on the Democrats...). The one that has really given me pause is this one:

I'm flabbergasted. Apparently this is supposed to project a positive message about the fact that the Republican vice presidential candidate was a woman, but I just can't imagine a more denigrating way of expressing that! In a weird way this button completely infantilizes the candidate. It also expresses a weird exhuberance about the candidate's gender, as if that's the only thing that matters. I showed it to a bunch of friends at women's dinner last night, and they first thought it must be a button intended to make fun of the candidate. They were incredulous when I told them I had bought it from the GOP itself!

And finally, a couple of finished objects from last week: the turban hat from Folk Hats for my Mom's birthday, and then a little "child's hat" from Last Minute Knitted Gifts for a 2-year-old's birthday gift (obviously using the left over yarn from the turban). I have to say, I like the child's hat best:

Min første meme

On Rainy day goods I finally found a meme that I couldn't resist doing. Here is how you play:

• type your answer to each question below into Flickr Search
• using only the first page of results, pick an image
• copy and paste each URL into fd's mosaic maker
• blog it!

The Questions:

1. What is your first name? Ellen
   
2. What is your favorite food? thimbleberries
   
3. What high school did you go to? Sehome
   
4. What is your favorite color? periwinkle
   
5. Who is your celebrity crush? Rufus Sewell
   
6. What is your favorite drink? tapwater
   
7. Dream vacation? Zanzibar
   
8. Favorite dessert? chocolate pudding
   
9. What do you want to be when you grow up? balanced
   
10. What do you love most in life? learning
    
11. One word to describe you? quixotic
    
12. Your flickr name? Kverulantinnen. Nothing was generated so it asked me if I meant "quarantining," so I used that instead.