Fedre og barn

This weekend Nordisk råd sponsored a film festival in Oslo: each Nordic country has nominated a film to compete for the Nordisk råd film prize, and they're all being shown in each of the capital cities successively. My friend L got free tickets, and we went to see two of the films yesterday. I was almost totally overwhelmed with sadness after seeing them!

The first was Thomas Vinterberg's Submarino which tells the parallel stories of two brothers who continue in adulthood to struggle with consequences from the serious neglect they suffered in childhood. It depicts a really harsh life and in some respects was brilliantly filmed. The realism is both grueling and at times poetic, and the acting was totally convincing. The two boys try desperately to care for their baby brother since their mother can't (or won't) and then one of the two ends up as a single father who wants with all his heart to take care of his son, but is addicted to heroin. Truly heartbreaking material...

On the other hand, I ended up totally disappointed by the film's heavy-handed message of redemption. I suppose the (false) hope that the film makers held up at the end is supposed to balance out the horrific experiences depicted in the movie, but to me it just made the entire thing meaningless. It was a huge let down, and in my view a massive intellectual cop out to suggest that everything is going to be okay just because two of the main characters end up sitting next to each other on a church pew at the end.

The other film, Miesten vuoro (being released internationally as Steam of Life) would have been wonderful if I hadn't already been so emotionally battered by Submarino (we had only a half hour between screenings). The film is a documentary depicting various Finnish men talking together while naked in the sauna. Brilliant concept wonderfully executed. It goes straight to the heart of Finnish culture and identity construction. There were a few perfect aesthetic moments in the film that exactly convey the off-kilter surrealism that runs through Finnish life. I wish I could find some images on the internet, but there don't appear to be any.

One such surreal and poetic scene was an exterior shot of a camping trailer out in the woods in northern Finland that had been converted to a sauna; through the steamy window you can see the butts of two men sitting inside. Another was two army officers who, after just having a deeply emotional conversation in the sauna, bow to each other and shake hands, and wish each other a happy independence day while still nude. It is really striking how many of these men interviewed are struggling emotionally with the loss of children, either through divorce or in once case through death. I think I have never seen such a strong portrayal of fatherly love and longing for absent children. It blew me away, and was really almost too much to bear.

When they introduced the film they compared it to Heftig og begeistret, and I can see why, though I think this one is really a better film. The only thing I didn't like is that at the very end they brought in a choir, which I thought made the similarities between the two films just too obvious. After the screening the director explained why they did it, and what the song means in the Finnish context (apparently it's a song often sung at the funerals of children), and that the father whose child had died felt very comforted by the inclusion of the song. That made sense as part of a process of public mourning within Finland, but not for those of us coming to this film from the outside.

It all makes me so very, very grateful for my little family and the amazing job that KE does as a loving and responsible (and fun!) father. 

I've finished the front of the aran sweater, and am close to finishing the first sleeve. It's amazing how quickly it's going, considering I haven't really had much time to knit this week. I've pretty much decided just to finish this up before picking up the Fanakofte to do the finishing work on that. Once these two are done, I'm going to cast on for Lissuin, since I'm ready for some color experimentation after all these cables and finishing.

Off to make a pizza dough and block the front of the aran sweater...

Sykedag

Yesterday E got really sick. He coughed all night and was in miserable shape during the day. It got worse in the late afternoon. He slept for a couple of hours (he hasn't napped in the afternoon since his second birthday) and then was queasy and even threw up a few times in the evening. Poor little guy. So obviously he (and I) stayed home today. KE had classes all day, so it was a long stretch, though it went pretty well. E felt much better, so we mostly just played. I was particularly impressed with one of his projects: he got out his Brio train set, which he hasn't done in a long time, and decided to build an elevated track. He doesn't really have very many blocks, so we had to raid the kitchen. Here's the result:

Creative, no? We also spent a lot of time sorting Legos by color. E ate quite a bit, which was good since he basically hadn't eaten anything yesterday, and threw up most of what he did manage to ingest. In between playing, I tried to do a little house work: a couple of loads of laundry, some folding, and making a big pot of fårikål for KE who loves the stuff. Easiest recipe in the world: layers of hunks of lamb and chunks of sliced cabbage, some salt, some peppercorns, and a bunch of water. Simmer the hell out it for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, and eat with boiled potatoes. Barbarian food, but KE loves it. As I'm moving more and more in a vegetarian direction, it appeals less and less, so I boiled up a separate pot of cabbage in veggie broth for myself.

I didn't get as much knitting done as I would have liked today. If I really wanted to, I could probably get the front of the Aran sweater finished tonight. I only have about 4 inches to go. I've also continued to think about the blue alpaca scarf, and the more I think the more I want to go back to the plain (but curly) stockinette. I've been reading up on applied I-cord edges, and I think that might be the thing. Here's a sweater pattern that includes it, and that has a good video demonstration. It would be an incredibly tedious project, but I think the end result would be pretty great. We'll see if I ever actually do it...

Today was obviously a wash work-wise, but I did get a big package in the mail from Riksteatret with material on their big 1997 Peer Gynt extravaganza (four different performances based on the play that toured the country in one season). Lots to sort through there. Plus I got word over the weekend that my article on Nikolaj Frobenius' Teori og praksis is accepted for publication and without revision. Those of you who are academics know how rare and thrilling that is. I'm particularly pleased since it is a very essayistic and loose article.

If E needs to stay home tomorrow, KE will skip classes so that I can work. I have to get my lecture on Asbjørnsen and Moe ready for Wednesday, find some missing bibliographic references for the Frobenius article, and if I'm lucky get a little more writing done on the "Mediating Peer Gynt" chapter (Working title. Not sure I'll keep it).

Eplekjekk

This was yet another week that has me waking up on Saturday morning exhausted and a little overwhelmed. For the most part it was good, but we did get bad news about our on-going project of building a garage. I don't think I've ever even mentioned that here because it has just taken so incredibly long. At any rate, we have long wanted to build a garage, and it has taken a really long time to get a building permit and to find someone to fell some trees and do the foundation (the garage itself will be delivered and built in just a few days by the company that produces them once the foundation is in place). We finally got a quote for that, and it's at least twice as much as what we had planned for. It will wipe out a lot more of our savings than I had bargained for, and since I'm pretty (okay, incredibly) neurotic about having a savings buffer I totally freaked out. And predictably that led to a big discussion about finances in general, where the conclusion is that I'm a control freak with a compulsive need to know all the exact balances on all accounts at all times. You see, we have separate accounts, even though we've been married over six years, and neither of us has any access to the other's accounts. Is that weird? I think so. But we're working it out now--better late than never!

I spent much of the week in the archives of NRK, the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, watching three film versions of Peer Gynt. It was totally fascinating. Even though there are only three films (a taped stage production, a television mini-series and a documentary) there is just so much interesting material to work on. I already have 12 pages written--just my first impressions and ideas about what I want to do in the chapter. While I'm doing that, I'm also reading Hans Midbøe's three-volume performance history of Peer Gynt, and learning a ton about the 1876 stage production (the first ever, almost ten years after publication. Critics said it couldn't be done, but it was a huge success). Needless to say, I'm going to have to visit some theater archives too. And of course the wonderful thing is that since I live here, I can just do that, pretty much any old time I like. This is so different from when I worked in the US and half the time didn't even know what resources were available, let alone visit them. It's great to be able to just poke around and follow where ever what I find leads me. Yay archives!

I have reached a point of frustration with the English course I'm taking. This week we had a class "discussion" that was the farthest thing imaginable from a real discussion. The instructor doesn't appear to have the faintest idea what the purpose or format of a real discussion should be. We were given a list of questions in advance, then divided up into groups of two to discuss them. So far so good, though with only about 10 people in the room that day, not really a necessary step. Then he brought us all together for a large group "discussion" and simply proceeded to lecture us again. One (older) woman and I tried to say stuff, and tried to talk to each other, but it was all so strictly mediated through the instructor that it totally didn't work. I don't remember anyone else even trying to say something. The hilarious thing was that at the end the instructor said "Okay, good discussion today!" Uh, no... From there I went to my own class where every single student in the room was engaged, where they had come with their own questions, and where we learned just as much if not more. The thing is, if you're going to allow discussion in class, you have to trust that the students are actually capable of intelligent thought and the ability to communicate. If you as the instructor are going to control every aspect of the thought process, then really you should dispense with the notion of "discussion" entirely and just lecture.

My long list of finishing tasks on the Fanakofte apparently scared me off, and I spontaneously started working on some comfort knitting without a pattern. Actually, I wasn't just scared off, I was foiled by demonic forces in my house. Somehow, things have been disappearing rather inexplicably recently. First E's cowboy had vanished (kind of a crisis because his buddies at school have started a "cowboy club"), even though it hasn't been out of the house, and now my "kit bag" (with scissors, stitch markers, etc.) is completely gone. I had it in the living room last Sunday, and since then I have not seen it. I've checked every imaginable place, of course, and it is gone. Argh.

After doing some desultory knitting on the brown tweed Aran pullover, I'm back to that lace weight alpaca yarn that I've tried repeatedly to use for something, this time trying to make a scarf. I was so enamored of the bias construction of Lanesplitter skirt that I want to make a scarf in the same way. I wanted it to be plain stockinette on tiny needles, but that curls so much I gave up and settled on 1 x 1 rib:

Still not sure whether I like it or not, and I would definitely have to increase every other row instead of every fourth. I may just go back to the stockinette, curling be damned. I've toyed with the idea of double knitting, which might get rid of the curling problem and still give the plain surface I want. With lace weight that might just work (I'm worried about it being too stiff). I may give it a try, though I'll need to find a how-to somewhere on the internet. Though when I compare this experiment with the brown tweed Aran, I have to wonder why I'm even bothering:

I mean, that's actually kind of amazing. I don't know why I can't get more revved up about it. This is actually really quick and easy to knit. This far into it I don't even need to look at the pattern or use stitch markers (a good thing, since they have been spirited away...). Okay, that's it, I'm stuffing the hopeless blue alpaca back into a bag and focusing on this project instead!

KE had promised me an apple tree for my birthday, and yesterday we finally went to pick one out. "Pick one out" is a bit of an exaggeration. It's the end of the season here, so there wasn't much left. We did see a green Gravenstein (the apples we had in my yard growing up) but alas that tree was already sold. All we saw (at first) was a bunch of trees with red apples that we feared would be the mealy kind. I can not abide mealy apples. We were about to give up, but went back for a second look once we found out they were all 50% off. Lo and behold among the mealy ones we found a red Gravenstein. We were bold and bit into one of the apples, and it was absolutely perfect: crisp, tart and juicy. We snapped it up, did some logistical juggling to get it in the car, and KE planted it (I got to pick the spot) right away when we got home:

(I just ran out into the cold wet grass in my pjs to take that picture). It's the very small, spindly tree with the yellow leaves. This is my first time ever having an apple tree as an adult and I am thrilled! Here's what the fruit looks like:

Nifty, eh? According to Wikipedia the Gravenstein is a Danish variety discovered "as a chance seedling" in a town called Gråsten in 1669.

Små skritt

Although I finished the knitting of the Lanesplitter skirt lickety-split, it took me quite a few days to make it to the fabric store to pick up elastic for the waistband, and even more days to get around to sewing it up. This morning I whipped it up in less than an hour. Very satisfying. So now I finally have a finished object to report:

I think everyone who has looked at it thinks it's hideously ugly, but I stubbornly continue to think that it's cool. E was eager to get in on the photo session. Crikey that boy is getting tall!! If you look closely you can see that his lip is split. He took a really bad fall during a walk in the woods at school. Poor boy. The only good thing about it is that it hurt to suck on his pacifier, so he agreed to not use it for a few nights. So far he's gone three nights without it, and really hasn't complained at all. So maybe there's hope that he'll stop using it all together. I'm cautiously optimistic.

The other day I finally got my act together to make one of the recipes from Camilla Jensen's Bønner og linser, a salad called "Limalime":

As you can see, it's a mix of lima beans, pea pods, tuna (amazing organic Italian from the local health food store--who knew?), arugula, red onion, and a potent lime-olive oil dressing. It was pretty scrumptious, I have to say. This is just the leftovers. It's a little late in the season for a summer salad, but I've been wanting to make this since I bought the book back in July. So I'm a little slow...

I finished the knitting on the Fanakofte yesterday, so today I'll start the finishing. I have to:

1. sew down the hems (one sleeve and the body)
2. sew in the yarn ends (both sleeves and body)
3. sew machine seams for the armhole and front steeks
4. cut the steeks
5. knit the shoulders together 
6. pick up and knit the neckline 
7. sew down the hem around the neckline
8. pick up and knit buttonhole and button bands
9. sew down the hems of the button and button hole bands
10. sew around each buttonhole
11. buy buttons
12. sew on buttons

Phew. That's a lot of work when you list it all out. I probably won't be done until next weekend. In fact, as I look at it, I'm finding that list pretty demoralizing. Gah! I'm getting a little itchy to start my next project though. I'm thinking it's going to be Lissuin (Ravelry link for those who are in the loop) with the yarn I bought in Denmark this summer. Still not quite ready for Fulmar, for some reason. I should really finish the Aran sweater I started earlier this summer though...

P.S. A friend from high school posted this clip on Glenn Beck from The Daily Show on Facebook. It is so good I have to repost here:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Back in Black - Glenn Beck's Nazi Tourette's
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

It's a perfect send up of Beck's habit of crying Hitler and Nazism every time the left does something he doesn't like. What a piece of work.

Frenetisk

Wait, what, is it only Wednesday? I feel totally and utterly blown out by this week, with two more active days to go. Golly!

My primary work focus has been the proofreading of my (old) book manuscript. It's done now, after another hour this morning before classes. I ended up with a list of corrections that was five pages long! I'm not quite sure how I feel about the book after having read it closely again for the first time in a couple of years. Some parts hold up pretty well, others are a bit cringe-inducing. It will be interesting to see if it gets any sort of critical reception (it's being published by a really obscure publisher).

I've also been getting my ducks in a row for the Peer Gynt book. I had a really good talk with a colleague who said she liked the idea a lot, but pointed out that I really have to stop writing articles, as they are totally killing my book mojo. I love writing articles and hate writing books, and she's totally right. As I was talking to her on the phone I was eying my research agenda for the fall, which I had posted on my bulletin board, and it was chock full of totally fun, but totally irrelevant article ideas: Norwegian horror films, Lars von Trier and geography, etc. After she pounded into my head that I needed to only work on the book projects (Peer Gynt first, with a firm deadline of the end of December, then the cabin book after the new year starts), I crossed out that list, added a big NO at the bottom, and made a new list that has a month by month schedule for finishing the Peer Gynt book. I can tell that this is great advice based on how uncomfortable it made me feel when she said it!

I do think I'm on track now. With all the proofreading I haven't really been able to do any actual writing for the PG book, but I did call the NRK television archives today to set up appointments to view the two television dramatizations of Peer Gynt next week.  Given the wild, amorphous form of PG I find it kind of astounding that there haven't been more Norwegian attempts to film it. I'm thinking the last chapter of the book will be on these two television versions (1986 and 1993), a film I haven't yet seen called Peer Gynt i våre hjerter, and Gatas Gynt.

On the home front there are lots of Steiner school activities this week. I went to the first group parents' meeting on Monday night. It was interesting to meet some of the other parents. I felt out of place, not because I'm foreign but because I seemed to be the only really career-focused woman of the bunch. I hadn't expected that. Tonight E and I decorated a basket of vegetables to take to school tomorrow. Each family is supposed to bring vegetables so that the kids can make a soup for the fall Thanksgiving party they'll hold on Friday. I just emptied my knitting basket into an empty drawer and taped pictures that E drew to the outside of it. Thankfully we had a good supply of root vegetables in the fridge, so I didn't have to make a grocery store run...

I attended my English class today--full on lecture, and it appears that my many questions are perceived as pure distraction, rather than an integral part of the learning process. Ugh. It does inspire me to engage my own students much more in the following hour. We had our first real seminar discussion of a text today, and it went pretty well, especially considering how miserable my presentation was last week. I came home with an incredibly upset stomach and throbbing headache, though, so I'm just waiting until E falls asleep before I myself crawl into bed to try to recuperate for tomorrow.

I'll be meeting with my mentor for the first time since spring term, which should be fun and interesting. I also have to work on stuff for my former Ph.D. student, who is going on the job market again this fall, so there probably won't be time for any writing tomorrow. Friday I'll stay home to go to the Steiner school party, since KE will be in class. Then I'll collapse!

Clearly there's no pretending that I'm not smack dab in the midst of what is turning into a very hectic semester. The leaves are turning yellow and red too, and we've had frost at night, so I can no longer delude myself into thinking it's still summer.

Hurra for meg

Yesterday was my birthday, and it was a very mellow, very nice day. First off the sun was shining, for which there is certainly no guarantee in Norway in September. I woke up early and was excited to bang out my thoughts on my new book plan. On Friday I had a major conceptual breakthrough. I realized that I have another book gestating that is not the cabin book. This other book, which is on Ibsen's Peer Gynt and the production of meaning, is begging to be written. I have a strong feeling that I can get it done by December of this year. The cabin book just isn't coming together, and I think it needs more time to percolate in the background. So now I have a chapter outline for the new book and I've gathered together all the related work I've done on Peer Gynt (which turns out to be a lot) and apportioned it out into the right chapters. I have over 70 pages and a very clear plan for the rest now. That was a great way to start my day. How exciting to discover that I have nearly half of a book written!

Once the guys were up and running we drove down to the local Kiwanis Club barn sale and I scored in a big way! You have to understand that I am a real tightwad, I hate being parted from my kroner, and that I live in a country with ridiculously high taxes on consumer goods. Things that would cost $2 in the US sell for closer to $20 here. This makes furnishing a home a difficult challenge. I have been looking for a table cloth that fits on our very wide table when it is fully extended since at least Thanksgiving time last year. There is just nothing out there, but in the stacks of linens upstairs in the Kiwanis barn I found one, and not only is it big, but also new and clean and really nice: 100% cotton in lovely, deep blues from Habitat that will work with our colorful Fiestaware dishes.

I have also been looking for a pepper mill since we moved here in December 2008. I see them in stores all the time, but I am just not going to pay $40 dollars for a freaking pepper mill. The fabulous Kiwanis had three to choose from. I took the least garish and gunky one. It had an irritating label stuck on, but after soaking the mill in hot soapy water for 15 minutes it scrubbed off like a dream, and now I have a sparkly little pepper mill:

KE thinks it's hideously ugly, but clearly he's just plain wrong about that! How can someone who barely ever uses pepper be expected to appreciate the glory that this is?  I paid 30 NOK for both the table cloth and the pepper mill -- just under $5 right now. Now that's a price I can live with, and it was the best birthday present I've had in I think five years! Okay, so I'm easily amused and "billig i drift" (cheap to maintain) as they say here in Norway.

We went grocery shopping (thankfully painless) and then I baked myself a cake and made pizza on a gloriously sunny afternoon in our kitchen, with the door to the patio wide open. After the pizza we took a walk around the neighborhood. We were feeling bold, so we scoped out the yard of the abandoned house that we desperately want to buy. That only made us want it more, so on the way home we were scheming and trying to figure out how to make that work. I know it's possible to find out who owns a particular property, and I'd like to contact the owners, but we have a lot of financial stuff to work out, and plus we need at least one of us to have a permanent position. It is totally my dream--an old house on the verge of collapse--combined with KE's dream--perfect solforhold (a quintessentially Norwegian word that I don't think has an English equivalent. It means "sun conditions"--meaning how early the sun shines on the property in the morning and how late in the evening at all times of the year. Norwegian are--quite justifiably--obsessed with solforhold) and a little bit of a view of the fjord. Sigh. Want want want want want. I would be willing to sacrifice a lot to buy that house. Since we can't do it, we went home and consoled ourselves with birthday cake.

It was the same cake I baked last Saturday for KE's birthday (yes, we're exactly seven days apart, born in the same year). Last weekend I tried out the ginormous stand mixer that KE insisted on buying for baking bread. It ended up producing a huge amount of big, awkward parts to wash and a cake that wasn't even close to properly mixed (seriously, it looked like a failed marbled cake, with random chunks of yellow cake in what was supposed to be plain chocolate). This time I baked in my usual way, which is to say by hand, and the result was much better. The cake was as light and fluffy as the machine mixed one, but it was actually blended. I like being a Luddite when it comes to baking. The icing was chocolate too, with a few tablespoons of coffee in it. I hate coffee, but I do love coffee ice cream and chocolate-coffee icing. Yum. KE and E sang both "Hurra for deg" and "Happy Birthday" and a good time was had by all.

I finished nearly everything on the Lanesplitter skirt last night while watching MPGjr (cringe)--now all I need to do is buy elastic for the waistband, sew it down, and it's done. It turned out to be a size large rather than medium, and I think it probably would look better on if it were a medium, but I'll still wear it. Pictures to come, once the elastic is in.

Strikke-nirvana

Even the most superficial reader of this blog knows that I am a Really Enthusiastic Knitter. I knit all the time, and when I'm not knitting, I'm often thinking about it and most likely wishing I was doing it. There are many projects that I've sincerely enjoyed knitting, and also many that have been a source of frustration. Some I've abandoned, some I've conquered, but never, ever have I had so much pure, unadulterated fun as I have since starting on the Lanesplitter skirt yesterday! I mean, come on, look at this:

Pattern: Lanesplitter from Knitty issue 32 (2010)
Yarn: six skeins of Noro Kureyon, color 220
Needles: 6mm/US 10 bamboo straights (!)

The colors are crazy, and the bias stripe pattern is brilliantly easy to produce. I ended up with color number 220, not because that was my ideal choice, but because it was the only one of the three (!) color choices available at Tjorven that I even halfway liked. Apparently they're phasing out Noro yarns, which seem to have peaked in popularity here in Norway. I was really skeptical because this color has a cherry red in it that I hate. I sorted through the skeins and chose the ones where the cherry red was most limited. As I knit, I'm just taking it out when it comes along. Here's a picture of the whole project so far. You can see the clever shaping at work:

It turns out that 220 was the perfect color combination, once the red was removed. It's exactly what I had in mind for a warm fall/winter skirt to brighten up my otherwise basic black wardrobe. There are enough muddy colors in there to balance out the brights. It is fascinating (as everyone said about Brooklyntweed's Noro Scarf) to watch the contrasts develop as you knit along. You alternate knitting two rows from one skein and two rows from a second. You could do this with sold colors as well, which would create a much more regular effect (like Mustaa villaa's peppermint stripe Baktus scarf).

You start at the lower right corner with only 4 stitches and increase one stitch on each end of every other row until the piece is the length you want your skirt to be. Then you decrease at the upper right while increasing at the lower left every other row to maintain that length and start creating the width. Once it's wide enough to go (mostly) around your hips, you start decreasing one stitch on each end of every other row. That gives you a rectangular piece of fabric that you sew together and add a waistband to. Why didn't I think of this?