En lang dag...

This week is going slowly, slowly. I'm afraid it was a bit of a boring day for E, but I just couldn't muster the enthusiasm or energy for more than a walk to the library, unfortunately. We did have glorious weather today, which helped a lot, though. I think part of the problem for me is that there is just no relief from the constant attention-seeking. I had a maximum of seven minutes alone to myself at one stretch (I timed it), and for a lone wolf academic like me, not having any head space really knocks me off kilter. Okay, I admit it: I really miss work, especially since I'm in the midst of so much exciting new research. This makes me feel like a bad parent, but it's the truth...

The new sweater project is at a point where it is now worth taking a picture of:

I'm making this up as I go along. The plan is to do ribbing all the way through the pullover, maybe with a little cabling at the sides when I hit the waist, maybe a few increases over the hips. Not quite sure yet, and I'll just have to see when I get there. So far I'm super happy with the way it's turning out. I think this will be infinitely wearable. The two previous incarnations of this yarn were both cardigans, and I have developed such an aversion to cardigans that I couldn't wear them. To put it bluntly, my breasts and chest get really cold when I wear cardigans. Weird, I know, especially since every other knitting woman I know of--regardless of cup size--loves them.

I'm sure some people would look at this and cringe because of all the ribbing. For some reason, I happen to love knitting 2x2 ribbing. I think it has to do with my super-effective continental style of knitting. I barely have to change the position of anything to switch between knitting and purling, so ribbing is totally no big deal. I've been wanting a sweater like this for a really long time, but never found the pattern I wanted. I've now learned enough about the magic of top down knitting (especially from the Miss Honeychurch sweaters I knitted earlier this year) that I am able to design my own--yay! The ribs are a little wonky since I'm re-knitting the yarn, but I'm banking on it all smoothing out with a good soak and block at the end.

Today I made what I think must be my fourth or fifth dish out of Camilla Jensen's Bønner og linser. This one is called "Oreganofreste kikkerter," but since I didn't have any fresh oregano (and don't liked dried oregano very much) it ended up being Spisskummenfreste kikkerter" (cumin-sauteed chick peas):

The verdict was split. I loved it, KE thought it was just okay. I also made a thai green curry for dinner that got mixed reviews. That I just winged, but I realized half way through that I was missing a couple of essential ingredients. I forgot about fish sauce, which I always used to use when I made green curry back in the US, and I also didn't have frozen green beans, so I had to substitute with frozen peas, which don't work nearly as well for my idea of a green curry.

Flink pike

Traumatized as I was by last night's attempt to follow a meme designed for earnest homeschooling stay-at-home mothers, I really had to make up for things today, and golly it turned out to be a fun day. It started out with the brilliant idea to use up the left over mashed sweet potatoes in the fridge for bread. I scanned my cookbooks but didn't find anything, so I went to the internet and found this recipe for "healthy" pumpkin bread. I had to modify it some, but not much. Here's the result:

I'm glad I took a picture, because it's already gone! It was really yummy, gaining the stamp of approval from E and his friend who was over playing, KE, and me. I had to make some modifications on the fly, so here's the recipe for my version:

• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 1/2 or 2 cups (didn't measure) mashed sweet potatoes (could also use pumpkin)
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1 egg
• 2 tablespoons of melted butter

Mix the dry ingredients first, then add the wet. Pour into a bread pan lined with baking parchment, and bake for 1 hour in a 175 degree (celsius) oven. E did most of the mixing, which I think he actually really likes doing.

After baking, E and I ran some errands. We stopped by the green grocers, dropped off outgrown clothing at the UFF bins, picked up some staples at the grocery store, and did some fun shopping at the Kiwanis barn again. They're open from 10-12 on Tuesdays, so it's not often I can make it. I scored a great set of glass mixing bowls (kind of like this). It was missing one bowl, and when I got home I discovered that one of the two glass bowls we already have is the missing link, and it's even originally from the same set. Woo-hoo!

As if that wasn't enough domesticity, I also did a bunch of laundry and made a huge batch of hummus (recipe from Camilla Jensen's Bønner og linser, my current favorite cookbook) :

That's a full sized dinner plate. You're probably thinking it looks like cottage cheese. It's very lumpy because I mashed the chickpeas by hand with a potato masher. I still have a ton of chickpeas left over. I may try to put together a salad with the rest. The hummus isn't the best I've ever tasted, but I consider it a pretty decent first effort.

The universe rewarded me for my efforts. My good friend L from back in Eugene sent me a box of yarn from her stash! It was such a treat to open up the package and find:

Score!

En enkel kvinne

Every once in a while I come across some internet meme that both irritates me and piques my interest. The internet is so full of blogs written by frustrated housewives who use them to create an ideal public persona. I find them both fascinating and ... oh, I don't know, sad? Delusional? Sweet? Apparently there's something called the simple woman's daybook, which gives a kind of template to nudge them in the right direction. I thought I'd give it a try (things in bold are the template):
FOR TODAY

• Outside my window... Rain, granite, moss, a volunteer cherry tree, a broken ten speed, a rotting medicine cabinet, and raspberry brambles.

• I am thinking... About what a difference there is between the days when I'm "on" intellectually and when I'm "off."  Today I'm dead off.

• I am thankful for... I'm not really the thankful type. I know that sounds mean, but really I (and virtually everyone I know or know of) am so incredibly and overwhelmingly privileged that it seems fantastically arrogant to go around listing everything. I wouldn't even know where to begin to quantify my privilege. Plus, being the unrelenting atheist that I am, I don't have a transcendent being to address my feelings of gratitude to, and I don't think the people suffering in sweat shops around the world want my thanks so much as they want a living wage, safe conditions, healthy families, and peace.

• I am wearing... A wool sweater under my down comforter and over my pajamas. My nose is still cold.

• In the learning room... Oh, I get it. This is a thingy for homeschooling moms. Whoops. No wonder it's not quite my vibe.

• I am remembering... Being 19.

• I am creating... More gibberish to add to the enormous stream of data on the internet. Also, I am onto the third attempt to knit a wearable sweater out of a bunch of green Rauma finull. It is a testament to the durability of that yarn that I have knitted and unravelled two sweaters using the exact same yarn, am now knitting it up yet again, and it shows absolutely no signs of wear. Wow.

• I am going... to have to not knit tomorrow. I think I overdid it today, and my hands will need a rest.

• I am currently reading... The articles in Otto Hageberg's old anthology, Omkring Peer Gynt. 

• I am hoping... That I'll be able to get some writing done this week.

• On my mind... Gah, this is getting just way too redundant.

• Noticing that... Doing a meme takes much longer than just writing a blog entry. And that I've had to pee for the last half hour or so.

• Pondering these words... "Hans Hjærne var stor og ubrukt." (His brain was large and unused). Knut Hamsun describing Isak in Markens Grøde. 

• I am hearing... Tinnitus.

• From the kitchen... Over the course of today: oatmeal, leftover stir-fry, pancakes, toast, plain rice and boiled vegetables. No sauce. No condiments. Nothing fancy. Not my finest hour.

• Around the house... We don't really have all that much stuff, but what we do own appears to be strewn in every imaginable spot and in a totally random pattern.

• One of my favorite things... Definitely my ball winder. And most definitely worth the 350 Swedish kronor I paid for it, even though I thought the price was outrageous at the time!

• A few plans for the rest of the week: make it through the long days with E without being too cranky. Do laundry. Revise the chapter draft.

• Here's a picture thought I am sharing...

Not sure quite what is meant by a "picture thought," but this image has been haunting me since I ran across it in the National Library photo archives last week.

Source:  Galleri NOR

Photographer: Anders Beer Wilse
Place: Dovre, Dovrefjell; Dovre, Svånådalen
Date: 1915

So, did you learn anything about me you didn't already know? I am nothing if not consistent.

Høst

It's been a while since I could open a blog post with a finished object reveal. I'm very excited with the end result of the aran pullover from that ancient copy of Vogue Knitting that I've had forever:

The cowl neck is a little over powering, but otherwise this is a pretty ideal use of this free yarn. It's a much more interesting and fun project than the hourglass sweater, and the perfect thing to bundle up in as the temperatures and leaves start to drop.

I have to confess that I rather impulsively started on a new project last night. After a long haul of finishing work on the aran I couldn't bear to pick up the Fanakofte just yet. I'll blog the new project once I have something interesting to show. In the meantime, today I did dutifully start working on the Fanakofte. It's been so long since I even looked at it that I have to repost my list of the remaining finishing work. Here it is, updated with today's efforts:

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

Gulp.

The only other productive things I've done this weekend are some writing on the book chapter (it now has a much better structure, and has filled 27 pages!), and some matauk. There's a scraggly old apple tree way off in one of the hidden corners of our yard that I always forget about. Yesterday KE gathered the remaining apples, and this morning I diced most of them up and froze them in six-cup (pie) portions. It ended up being 24 cups of apples, plus a few of the biggest and nicest ones that I set aside for eating now:

I always feel so darned virtuous when I am able to do something with food sources like this. Next year I want to be even better about gathering stuff from our own yard.

This coming week may be a little trying. E is home all week from school for høstferie, but KE will be in class as usual, so it will just be E and me, with no real plans. The weather has turned rainy too, so I'm not quite sure how possible it will be to get him out doing things. It will definitely be a challenge!

Stolt forfatter!

Title: Figurative Space in the Novels of Cora Sandel
Publisher: Alvheim & Eide akademisk forlag
Year: 2010
Pages: 194 (including the bibliography...)
Author: me me me me me!

This is only my second academic book. I finished writing it in March 2007, and even thought I already had a contract for it with a publisher the publication process took over three years. Three slow and painful years, I might add. I am so happy to have it in my hot little hands, finally!

Strålende dag

1. We had fabulous fall weather today: glorious sunshine and cool, crisp temperatures.

2. I drove E and a classmate to one of the two other Waldorf preschools for a first-grade activity. The three groups of first graders got together for a walk in the woods. Next fall they'll merge the groups to form one second grade class at the big school, so it's important that they get to know each other throughout this school year through activities like this. The other preschool was a really neat place, and I got the sense that E really enjoyed himself. There was another boy with the same name, though. Argh, all my research on name statistics failed me!*
3. I got a lot of administrative tasks done today: four letters of recommendation in the mail, documents uploaded to my course intranet site, revising the set up for my spring course, and answering a student's request for information.

4. There was even a tiny amount of time to plug some information into my Peer Gynt chapter. I made it onto page seventeen, so that puts me over the halfway mark.

5. KE gathered a bunch of small apples from the volunteer apple tree behind our compost pile (not the one we just planted). It is a very small, very unassuming tree, but it actually does produce good apples. On a whim I decided to make an apple cobbler (or crisp. I can never remember the difference). I just made up the recipe: melted butter and honey in a saucepan, then added oatmeal, cinnamon, and a bit of flour, then spread it over the diced up apples in a baking dish, and baked at 200 C for about 15 minutes. We had a package of vaniljesaus left over in our fridge, so we ate the crisp topped with vanilla sauce. Yum. Pretty darned good.

Nothing  fancy, but still a treat.

6. I'm about a third of the way done with the second arm of the aran pullover. I'm getting close to running out of yarn, which is okay since I'm just going to unravel the hourglass sweater I made last year. I've gotten a lot of use out of that sweater, but there are a few things I don't like about it, so I won't be too torn up about the end of its life in this form.

7. At work I found out about a conference in the spring that looks just up my alley. It's in Trondheim, which makes it pretty do-able, although unfortunately it's just a few days after my major conference in Chicago. I do think it's worth the effort to do both, though.

*There were 86 boys born in Norway in 2004 who got the same name as E, so it was really pretty unlikely that he would end up with another one in his class. The ten most popular boys names for that year are Mathias, Markus, Martin, Andreas, Jonas, Kristian, Tobias, Daniel, Alexander, and Sander. Not a single one of these is a pre-Christian Nordic name.

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...