Hurra for deg som fyller ditt år!

My little boy turned four today! We've been down in New Mexico visiting family, and we just finished opening presents. Let me take a moment to say what a sweet boy he is. Right now as I write he's sitting at the dining room table with his grandpa playing with a new set of Legos that is way too advanced for  him (age 6-8), but which he absolutely loves. So nice to hear them chatting away together like the best of friends...totally worth all the effort to bring him down here!

Evig opposisjon

My guy got elected, in case you hadn't heard. And even before he takes office, I'm starting to feel leery. A friend just posted a link to this commentary on Facebook, and it gave me a sinking feeling to read it. It's a pretty biting criticism of Obama's ideological positioning.

Looking back, I think I got swept up in the same hysteria as everyone else: Obama has the extraordinary ability to absorb whatever hopes and aspirations people from all points on the political spectrum project onto him. I actually thought he was a leftist. That is really demoralizing, because more than anything it means that I bought the anti-Obama republican propaganda.

So, as Obama's cabinent and policies start to take shape, this leaves me back where I always am: in the eternal opposition...

Maybe I actually really am a kverulant (a "curmudgeon" for the non-Norwegian speakers). And becoming more of one. I was at a meeting yesterday with really delightful colleagues from across campus. We were evaluating and ranking fellowship applications. The discussion was earnest, collegial, and serious. Yet I find that I have absolutely no patience. I was short, interrupted people, and was cranky. I had no earthly reason to be that way. For some reason, perhaps because I'm so out of practice in social interactions in general, I'm having a really hard time behaving myself. I'm not really sure when I turned into such a misanthrope. I think I used to have more social skills. Now people just get on my nerves. This is ridiculous! I really need to get my act together, especially as I enter a new job setting in a temporary position.

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.

Luksusproblem

As I do every year, I had a "buy nothing" day yesterday as a protest against "Black Friday." It's not like it's that hard, since in our family most days are "buy nothing" days, but I like to make a special point of not participating in the consumerist hysteria that ensues each year after Thanksgiving here in the US. Yesterday a person was even trampled to death in a Walmart and two people were shot in a toy store, according to news reports. Something is very wrong with human nature.

Instead of shopping we went over to my mom's house to help her with a bunch of paperwork. She wants to get all the health care stuff taken care of, including what to do with her body when she dies. She wants to donate her body to medical research, which is what both of her parents did. Kind of a melancholy topic, but always good to air it. I've known for years that this is what she wants, so it was no surprise.

While we were there she pulled out 19 skeins of this yarn from her weaving room to give to me--Donegal Tweed Homespun by Tahki in color 849 (discontinued):


It's a huge amount of single-ply aran weight yarn--over 3000 yards! It's kind of a yucky color actually, with navy blue, burnt orange, and ocher flecks in the brown to make it a tweed. But in a way it's appealing too, in a puky sort of way. When we got home I became totally obsessed with making swatches and trying to figure out the perfect pattern for it. It turns out that this tweedy yarn looks terrible with any kind of stitch pattern, but really good in stockinette (plain knitting). It is such a generous gift, and I felt like dropping all other projects. It would work wonderfully for a Brooklyntweed "Cobblestone" sweater, but KE swears he doesn't want another sweater right now (just skiing socks!) and that kind of sweater wouldn't work well on me. Finally, this morning when I woke up I realized that the only pattern that will really work is the "Hourglass" sweater from Joelle Hoverson's Last Minute Knitted Gifts. Conveniently, I had photocopied that pattern when I had the book checked out from the library, so at about 6 this morning I started in on it. So this is a totally unexpected turn of events, but I'm excited to see how it turns out--I'm definitely going to do it with a (mock?) turtleneck instead of the wide neck opening in the pattern, but otherwise plan to follow the pattern.

Eksperiment

Yesterday in the literary seminar I'm teaching this term I presented a full-on conference paper exactly as I would do it at a real conference. It was an experiment in teaching the culture of academic discourse in the humanities, rather than just the content. I gave the students a listening exercise to work on while I presented, which was intended to help guide them through the paper. It has the following instructions and questions:

In this exercise you will listen to a fairly typical conference paper presentation and attempt to sort out what the argument is based solely on listening (rather than reading). This is exceedingly difficult to do, yet it is the standard format for presenting research in the humanities. (Is that a good thing?)

1. You will need to come up with at least one question to ask the presenter about the content of the paper. Write that question (or those questions) here as it (they) occur to you during the presentation. At the end of the presentation, pose it (them)!
2. What is the thesis for this presentation (what is the problem to be analyzed)? Does the presenter state the thesis outright, or did you just have to infer it? (And in the end, did the presenter actually analyze what she said she was going to analyze?)
3. List the key points that the presenter makes. There should be some. If not, it is a weak paper! There shouldn't be too many, though. Hope for about 3-5.
4. Does the presenter make use of specific theoretical terms or specific theories? If so what are they, and do they work to support the argument being made? Would something else that you know of have worked better?
5. Does the visual material presented help or hinder your understanding of the paper?

Wow. I have never had such an attentive audience at a conference presentation, and I have never had so many questions and comments. The post-paper discussion was really interesting because we focused both on the content of the paper and on the process of presenting. Since this is a split senior/graduate seminar, there were graduate students in the group who may well be presenting papers in the next year or so. As far as I can tell we don't give them any specific training in how to do that at this university, which is why I subjected them to my own research (on a text they had to read for my class). For me it was delightful to know that the audience had read nearly every thing I referenced in the paper, including the theory bits. I would definitely do this again in the future, at least with graduate students. I wonder if other people have done a similar exercise?

And, in other news, a holiday confession: KE and I browbeat my mother into agreeing to have our Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant! I am so utterly relieved. This will be the first time in my entire life that I don't have a home-cooked meal on Thanksgiving, but I just didn't have it in me this year to prepare one. There was just too much else to be thinking about and doing. KE is delighted, and I'm looking forward to being able to either A) trash the restaurant food or B) learn some new dishes and traditions to encorporate in my own Thanksgiving meals (I presume I'll go back to making Thanksgiving dinner starting next year).

Update: The restaurant dinner was fantastic! We ate at Sweetwaters on the Willamette river, then took a short walk along the river after. Wow, I didn't realize what a breeze it is to do a restaurant Thanksgiving! And the best thing of all was that I got to wear my finished (finally!!) rillejakke:

Yay, yay, and double yay! Boy was I tired of that project...

Gjenforening

At last, after two weeks I have my laptop back! I couldn't be happier. To celebrate I uploaded some of my autumn pictures. First off is E as perpetual motion machine. Not quite sure how this picture happened, but I like it...

No children were hurt in the filming of this shot. Then there were a couple of pictures to document the house after getting it painted this summer. Here's the front:

Not long after this KE got cranked up and raked up all those leaves by hand! He left them down in the road for city pick up, but then some folks from around the corner drove up and hauled them off to use as compost. We've never been able to get the leaves to break down (they're sycamore), but apparently these people lie in wait, ready to claim our leaves as soon as we get them out into the public domain. And here's the driveway and side of the house:

The driveway doesn't actually look half bad here. In reality it's like a BMX course. No accident that the house color is practically the same as my blog background. Ah, how I love the colors of mud, clay, and brown paper bags. And finally, even my plain Jane dishcloths look cheery (relatively speaking) in the autumn leaves:


Happy November, happy computing!

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.