Kjepphest

I have only ever used the Norwegian word kjepphest in its figurative meaning: "a consuming interest, obsession" according to Einar Haugen's dictionary. For some reason I hadn't registered the more literal meaning of "hobby horse" until it was brought up at the parents' meeting at E's school. They were going to have a knights' ceremony where the second graders were to dress up and get knighted by the 10th graders, and each kid needed a cape, a sword, and a hobby horse.

KE made a cool sword out of some scrap wood, and I had already made a cape last year for Halloween, so the only thing left was the hobby horse (odd that we had never gotten him one before). Here's what I came up with last night:

The nose and mouth are embroidered. The mane is just scrap yarn. I hand stitched everything and used some old batting I had left over from something or another to fill it. It was an effort to make, not because it was difficult, but because I've been feverish for the past two days. I'm actually kind of pleased with the result. It certainly fits in with the Waldorf school aesthetic!

Høstlig helg

Yesterday was a beautiful fall day. While I was inside reading, KE and E got it into their heads to have a bonfire in the yard and grill pinnebrød, which I've never had before. E came running in to ask me to make some dough, so I quickly found a recipe on the internet and whipped some up. It's basically like biscuits, but a lot more elastic and smooth. I recognize it from classic American "pigs in a blanket" but that wasn't something I grew up eating or making myself, so this was an adventure for me. I also didn't know it was common to just grill the bread without wrapping it around a hotdog.

Still working on the "Ung vår" sweater, and making decent progress. Last night I reached the point in the body where I'm going to attach the sleeves:

There's cabling every fourth row, which I seem to mess up with remarkable frequency. Since it's black, I'm letting the mistakes slide. The point is to get this done quickly so I have something to wear.

Today I'm off to see a Danish movie in Oslo with a Danish friend. Should be fun.

Gjeldsslave

There have been people working on paving our street for weeks and weeks now. It turns out it's not just a question of throwing down some asphalt. They have had to dig up (and by that I mean pound out huge amounts of bedrock) and lay an entirely new road bed and drainage. They're working right in front of our house, so the other night the three of us went out to inspect. Here's some of what we saw:

Yes, that rubble is actually the street. And here's what our house looks like from the road. Notice that we never finished painting the trim (boo!). This is at about 8 o'clock in the evening, and it was quite chilly. We can also really tell that the days are starting to get shorter (hence the headlamp on E).

Today I had a visit at home from a contractor to talk about remodeling our house. KE and I have been making plans ever since my Mom visited us this summer to bump up the roof (the "middle" section above) and add a second floor. The house used to be a duplex with two small units (both under 800 sq ft). When we moved back, we (well, KE) knocked a hole in the common wall and we took over both units. Now, with the prospect of my Mom moving to Norway in the not-too-distant future, we are hoping to convert the smaller unit back into a separate apartment for her and add living space upstairs on our side for the three of us.

The contractor thought our plans sounded totally do-able, but insisted that we really need an architect for the project. Fair enough. He also gave us a ball park estimate of about 1.2 million NOK (a little over $200,000 US). Ouch! But amazingly, that's still way below what it would cost to buy an apartment for her. Like about half as much! This housing market is totally insane.

We're not entirely frightened off by the price though (especially since KE is really happy in his new job), so I guess we'll be moving ahead with the plans. First step is talking to the architects that the contractor recommends.

Since our budget is going to be tight, I am celebrating by making this Lima bean soup. It's still simmering, but smells divine. We'll be eating a lot of rice and beans over the next few years, I suspect, but given my love of legumes, that shouldn't be a problem!

Litt daff

I have had no knitting mojo recently. And I'm feeling rather daff. I can't get inspired to push through to the end of the Still Light Tunic. I only have one sleeve to go, but I also want to redo the neck and make it a cowl, and the bottom edging flips terribly, so I need to re do that too. Ugh. I would really like to start knitting a Stockholm cowl out of the cashmere yarn I bought this summer, but for some reason I feel compelled to finish at least some kind of garment for the fall. Working on a cowl would feel like cheating, for some reason.

Since I wasn't at all happy with the way the Oversized Guernsey I knit out of reclaimed yarn last year turned out, I decided to reknit it using an old Rauma pattern (model number 4017, which has the name "Ung vår") that I've had since 2003 or 2004. Since I can't find it online anywhere (not even Ravelry, gasp), I took a picture of the pattern photograph:

It's the only thing I had on hand that worked for the DK weight yarn, and I just didn't feel like investing in a pattern. This is what it looks like so far:

Can you tell that I messed up the first horseshoe cable? It has three twists inside instead of two, which is what the pattern calls for. It's a very simple pullover with the cable pattern centered at both front and back. The pattern calls for dropped shoulders, but I'm planning on altering that to raglan shaping instead. It will be nice to have a long, warm and somewhat flattering black sweater for every day wear. Problem is, I'm just not finding it all that fun to knit. Don't really know why even. Strange.

Koselig

There are many small things I like about living in Norway. One is the fact that on many evenings, a very eager and nerdy group of people gather to swing dance outside at the wharf where my ferry lands:

I've been working a few evenings over the past few weeks as we make the transition to juggling two full time teaching jobs in our family, so I've been seeing them quite a bit. It never fails to make me feel very happy to see these folks tearing up the boards outside. There's some cool retro style going on too. Some are really talented, others not as much, but all are enthusiastic and joyous.

FOer - ferdigstilte objekter

I wore my Bulgarian Pleated Skirt to work for the first time today. This has to be one of my all time favorite projects. Here's a snapshot from my office:

Loved wearing it, and even though it got dripping wet in the torrential downpour we had today, the fact that it is wool meant that it remained totally wearable, and dried quickly. I'm just so stinkin' pleased with it, and (even) really like the way it looks on me.

I haven't really said much about the small travel knitting project I've been working on in between stints of slogging through the Still Light tunic. It's Nessie from Danish knitter Julia Zahle's blog, Aalerusen. I used one skein of Kauni Effektgarn, and am relatively pleased with the result:

I worked on this on the Peer Gynt pilgrimage and on the trip to Helsinki. It was dead easy (just garter stitch and tons of short rows), and fairly striking in its tendril like form. I think mine looks like a sea slug.

While in Finland I bought 8 skeins of this yarn so that I can make a Graystone tunic:

Turns out I kind of bombed on my yarn purchase. I went out of my way to go to the huge Lankamaailma  yarn store in a suburb of Helsinki, while right on the Esplanade (which I passed every day from my hotel to the conference) was a Finnish handicraft store that sold a similar, but much more aesthetically pleasing (and much more expensive!) yarn in a gorgeous array of colors. I kind of wish I hadn't gone there, as I definitely experienced buyers remorse. But now I know--live and learn. If I'm ever in Helsinki again I'm heading straight for the handicraft store to buy some Paksu pirkkalanka. And I do think the yarn I ended up with will work out well for what I have in mind.

Finland!

It has been extremely hectic around here. Both E and KE started school last Thursday, and then last weekend E came down with a nasty cold. I started school on Monday, so already our first week of having two of us working full time we were in a childcare crisis. It would have been okay except that I had committed to attending a conference in Helsinki Wed-Friday of this week, which left KE in the lurch. Luckily his new boss was very understanding, and he made it work despite me jetting off.

The conference was really interesting. I didn't know any of the other participants, and it had been 15 years since I was last in Finland, so at times it was a little disorienting, though mostly just interesting and enjoyable. It's great to be home though! I'll post more about it with pictures when my energy level is back up.