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:

Vi skal ikkje sove bort sumarnatta

It's real summer here in Norway!

What better than knitting and dreaming and planning out on the patio?

Diverse

I finished knitting the Whisper Cardigan last night, and the end result is an "ugh" I think. I'm not wild about the blue, since I'm in a total drab/neutral phase right now.


I'm going to need to do the bind off over again, but am feeling bummed about the project so I'll need to let it stew in time out for a few days. Some people on Ravelry have suggested doing a tubular bind off, since that is supposedly more elastic than other types. If I do that, then I will have learned three new things, which probably makes the project worth it in the end. The other two are 1) that it is vastly better to pick up dropped stitches with a crochet hook than with the knitting needles (I dropped a lot of stitches on this project) and 2) how to wrap the end stitches on short rows so that you don't get a hole in the fabric.

It is with great gusto that I tore into the next project, yet another sweater that everyone on Ravelry has knit, the Gathered Pullover from Interweave Knits.

I don't really have a good answer as to why I keep knitting the same things that everyone else is knitting. I suppose it's partly because they are appealing designs and partly because I consciously or unconsciously want to share in some kind of group experience. At any rate, I think this will be the last of knitting super popular projects for a while, and I can go back to my life of the obscure.

Today was a brilliant day, 24 celsius and beaming sunshine (hence the terrible photographs from 8pm this evening). I walked down to the ferry this morning, which is a brisk 25-minute walk, and had all sorts of ideas bubbling in my head. I'm pleased that the living room is starting to come together, and even more pleased that KE has agreed to go furniture shopping tomorrow.

KE and I had a rousing (at times strained) two day discussion trying to define what "art" is. He had that as an assignment for his last ever undergraduate course (yay!), which just started this week. It is fascinating and a little distressing how good we are at talking past each other some times! But as always, it ended up being stimulating and satisfying.

Pliktoppfyllende

Just caught wind of the news about Nevada Senator John Ensign, who apparently had an affair and paid off his mistress, her husband, and their son, all of whom were members of his staff. Ouch! This from a one-time higher up in the ridiculous Promise Keepers organization, leader of the campaign to impeach Bill Clinton, advocate for "opposite marriage," and critic of Alaska Senator Larry Craig for playing footsie in a men's room.

Now don't get me wrong. I have no illusions that politicians on the other side have any more integrity. As the saying goes, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. But I have to admit that I just totally love it when the utter hypocrisy of conservatives like Ensign is exposed like this. The only difference between the two parties is that the Democrats pretty much don't bother to preach morality as they're dinking around, while for the Republicans the moralizing appears to be mandatory.

Meanwhile, I'm feeling exceptionally virtuous. I actually picked up the Whisper Cardigan and got the ribbing done, after having taken an extraordinary amout of time to pick up the correct number of stitches. I don't know why that was so difficult for me. I'm onto the back now, with only 7 inches of plain stockinette to go... Yay!

Ferdig

Just finished off the little guernsey for E that I started last summer. It's always a relief to finish a project. Now I really don't have anything standing in the way of the Whisper Cardigan except my own apathy. I'm thinking of starting something else instead: either the two-colored shetland pullover I mentioned in an earlier post, or else the ubiquitous Gathered Pullover (Ravelry link) using the Drops Fine Merino that I bought last month.

By the way, yesterday was our fifth wedding anniversary. I forgot, but KE reminded me. We so don't make a big deal about such things. Imagine my bemusement when I found out that my ideological and personal antithesis (in a good way), Sara Janssen, has her anniversary on the same day. Her gushing post on nine years of marriage puts me to shame! Sorry KE... you're the bee's knees, but I'm just not the gushing type.

PS: Found this nifty idea for using mason jars for storage of crafty stuff. Easy squeezy.

Små steg

Little by little we're starting to move into the main part of the house. First priority was getting E's bedroom set up. I think he really likes it, and has been asking every day for one of us to come play with him in his room. It doesn't show in the picture, but the room has a really high ceiling, so even though it's on the dark side of the house (facing the granite wall) and is relatively small, it has a good feel. Still need to get another "Trofast" frame from Ikea for the blue bins. I like the thought that this is where he'll be until he leaves home, the room he will most identify as his "gutterom."

Over the weekend KE's nephew helped us move the refrigerator over, so now we're cooking on this side of the duplex. Of course we haven't bothered to move everything over at once, so it seems like we have to run over to the other side to get something for each meal we prepare. But we have gotten our kitchen stuff from the States out of storage, and I was happy to see the cheerful Fiestaware again!

For right now KE and I are sleeping on foam mattresses in the living room and using the smaller bedroom on this side as a storage room and staging ground for the move. I'm actually sleeping much better here in the living room, which really surprises me. Yesterday I put the quilt that Grannie made for me on the bed in the little bedroom and even thought the room is still a complete mess, it really made it look better:

The renters built the loft platform. The room actually has a cathedral ceiling too. Don't know when we'll get time to take it down (or put the doors on the wardrobe), but every little thing helps at this point.

Aktivitet

Okay. Didn't quite get as much done as I had thought, but not too bad over all. Got the plain picot pullover done (except for weaving in the ends, which I'll do tonight):

Not totally happy with the shaping (shoulders too loose, neck opening too wide), but it's certainly wearable. It's very warm, so it won't get much use until winter hits. Can't quite figure out the pained look on my face. I really do hate having my picture taken, so it's weird that I'm so willing to post pictures of myself on the internet.

What I've actually spend most of my time on this weekend was frogging the horrible jacket made out of lovely shetland yarn. Here's the result:

That looks like it might be enough to make a shetland sweater from Traditional Knitting Paterns of Ireland, Scotland and England, though I'll have to weigh it to be sure. The pattern is a two-color all over diamond pattern. Very pretty, and it would be subtle in these tone-on-tone heathery colors.

I picked up the guernsey for E to work on as planned, only to discover that I had only half of one arm knitted rather than one and a half arms. So, more knitting than I thought. I tried it on him just to get a better picture of the pattern:

It's way too big of course, but I do like the pattern a lot. Guernseys are very appealing. And of course E is just painfully sweet. This pattern is called "Child's Filey Guernsey" and is from the traditional knitting book. I think I'll try to finish it off before I pick up the Whisper Cardigan again.