London, Loop, og Liberty

Golly. I hardly know where to begin after having spent a very intense week in London and Edinburgh. I was there for work as a visiting professor, which I'll write about on my academic blog later if I can gather my thoughts on the experience. And I think I'm going to have to break up the shopping and crafting updates into separate posts here too, since there's just so much!

I had a lot of work to do while I was there, and my hosts had planned a lot of really fun activities for me, so there wasn't a huge amount of time for being a tourist. I've also been in both cities before and seen all the major sites, so this time I used small, independent yarn shops as my guide for exploring. I went to two shops in London and one in Edinburgh, and also stopped off in the yarn departments of quite a few of the major department stores, so I feel like I got a pretty good overview of what's available.

My first stop was Loop in Islington, which also turned out to be my favorite of the shops. I really liked the neighborhood, which was in walking distance of University College London where I was based.

This is pretty much the perfect yarn shop. It's small, but has two floors filled with lovely yarns and it has a quirky vibe rather than the overly sweet pseudo-country style one often finds at such places. For some reason, I usually just ignore the sample knits in most stores, but the ones here (mostly lace shawls) were exquisite. My goal had been to buy some British yarn and to maybe find some buttons to replace the ugly ones on my Plain and Simple Pullover. Loop had both. They specialize in antique buttons and some of them are totally amazing (and spendy). Here's what I ended up with:

The yarn is Juno "Alice Sock," which is a fingering weight silk-alpaca-cashmere blend made in the UK. The color is called "Shadow Cave," and there's just enough to make some kind of simple shawl. I'm thinking maybe of making Henslowe (Ravelry link here). I even got a cloth bag to go along with the purchase.

Later that same day I stopped in at the Liberty department store, and couldn't resist buying some Liberty Tana Lawn. The idea is to make hankies, but I may just admire it instead. They were selling a packet of three hankies there for something like thirteen pounds, and I got enough to make eight hankies for twelve. The pattern is called "Lillian's Berries," I think. The yarn department there was almost entirely Rowan, which for some reason didn't appeal to me at all (Then. More on Rowan yarns in a later post...).

Dumme meg...

So back on Thursday I think it was, I was going to post a blog about the Graystone Tunic, which had been going great guns. I was racing through it, even though I had a sneaking suspicion that the size L was a bit big. I took a snapshot of my progress:

"Gosh, does that look big," I thought to myself. "Better try it on." And so I did:

Whoa! It was HUGE. Gargantuan. Colossal, even. And yes, that's right, I managed to mess up the ostensibly failproof garter stitch project. Not my finest hour as a knitter. To make matters worse, you can see that I very cleverly knit the sleeves before going on to the body, "to save time." So not only did I have to rip back four sets of increases, I also had to rip out two perfectly serviceable arms. I suppose you could say that's a negative about top-down knitting, except that it was totally avoidable had I just paid more attention and tried it on at an earlier stage.

Even though I'm knitting under a self-imposed deadline I was too demoralized to knit for a day or so, but now I've caught up (in the afternoon on Sunday, thanks to a full docket of winter sports on NRK today...) and am almost back to where I was when I started frogging:

I have tried it on, and it the fit is perfectly acceptable. And the good news is, it's quite flattering and just what I was hoping for. Phew. Now it's a mad dash to the bottom, with only a little waist shaping along the way. I will wear this tunic to at least one of my presentations in the UK next week, even if it kills me. (And yes, I should probably be worrying more about the presentations themselves than what I'll be wearing...)

Hvordan oppdra en nordmann

Every once in a while the cultural differences between me (a Pacific Northwesterner) and my husband (a Norwegian) become glaringly apparent. Take today, for example. Yes, the sun is shining. But that doesn't mitigate the fact that it is -15 celsius (that's a mere 3 degrees Farenheit). So what does a rational person do? I vote for sitting inside wrapped in woolens and knitting with a fire in the wood stove. KE on the other hand thinks this is a perfect day to be outside with E, skiing in the yard (that's still rational) and sitting in the sun. As in sitting still. In frigid temperatures. The man is insane, and so too, I'm afraid, is the boy. Here's proof:

Funny thing is, they actually seem to be enjoying themselves. All I can say is "cultural difference"!

Meanwhile, I'm progressing on Graystone. I've made it though the gargantuan cowl neck, and am about halfway through the raglan shaping:

As far as I can tell I haven't screwed anything up yet. I'm really curious how that over the shoulder cowl is going to look on me, and whether my neck will get cold... I'm also a little concerned about how that visible seam at the round join is going to look on the finished garment. I didn't think about that when I decided not to make the diagonal cable. I'm not sure if that seam would have followed along with the cable or not (I think not), and all the versions of this sweater that I've seen have been so dark that the seam wasn't visible. Time will tell, of course.

I also have really spectacular news to report: as of Thursday, I now have permanent residency in Norway! I got the notice earlier this week, and took the train from Oslo down to Ski (the administrative center for where I live), and got the permit added to my passport. In the end, after all that strife about language competency, it was totally painless. I can't even begin to explain what a relief this is! It means no matter what happens (barring ridiculous criminal behavior on my part, I suppose) the state can't separate me from my kid. I won't get deported. I can lead a normal life here (almost) just like anyone else. I think I'll even start being able to vote in local elections, which will be great, since I've always been such a firm believer in participating in the political process.

Skrekkstrikking

Oh my. Disaster struck yet again with that Alpaca yarn. Just before dividing for the arms, I discovered I had thirteen pattern repeats rather than twelve. That meant it would be impossible to have a symmetrical garment. I'm slow on the uptake, but even I realize this is a sign from the universe telling me to try working on something else.

So, I got out the weird, putty-colored yarn I bought in Finland back in August, and started in on the tunic version of Veera Välimäki's Graystone.

My plan is to knit it without the diagonal cable, and to knit until I run out of yarn or reach mid-thigh, which ever comes first. Please, O knitting gods, let plain garter stitch and worsted weight yarn on 5mm needles not be too difficult for me, as I apparently regress into knitting idiocy...

Last night we watched a movie on Netflix, Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island from 2010. It kind of fits in with my work right now, as I've been watching some Norwegian thrillers (De dødes tjern and Villmark) this past week. Shutter Island was well made and visually interesting (some fun retro touches), but didn't make it up there into the upper echelon of really great psychological thrillers. We also watched Christopher Nolan's Memento a week or so ago, since KE had never seen it. It blew me away in the theater back in 2000, but doesn't really hold up a decade later and on the small screen. The next movie I want to watch is Cloverfield.

The days are becoming noticeably longer. It's almost light by the time E arrives at school. I still can't take pictures in the light, which is a shame because it's such fun to see him really starting to master skiing. On Friday he even showed me how he can keep on his feet over the little ski jump the kids have built near the classroom. It is so amazing to see all these seven and eight year olds playing wildly in the mornings, some on skiis, some sledding, some just balancing on their feet down an icy "slide" that they've made along the path to school. These kids have no fear, incredible balance, and obvious joy at the winter conditions they play in. It's no wonder that I'll never get as good as walking on ice and skiing as other adults here--I didn't have 15 years of wild, frolicking play in these conditions to train me...

Alle gode ting er tre...

Third time's a charm, right? I've been trying for months and months to make a longish sweater/tunic out of fourteen skeins of charcoal gray Garnstudio Drops Alpaca yarn, and failing miserably. I initially bought the yarn to make a cabled turtleneck from one of my ancient Vogue Knitting magazines:

The yarn was way too dark to do justice to so many fussy cables, so I frogged the project and started in on the very popular Still Light tunic:

I actually came really close to finishing this (just one arm to go), but a nagging voice in my head kept telling me that the style wasn't right for my figure at all, so it's been stashed away in time out for a long time. Recently, I decided to make a clean sweep of it, and just frog the whole thing. Rather merciless, don't you think? My latest plan is to make a monochromatic zigzag dress (without the stripes, obviously, but with the same texture):

So far I'm really liking it. It's addicting to knit in the same way the Bulgarian Pleated Skirt from this summer was. I'm not sure if I have enough yarn, but I think it will be okay to use a different dyelot.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention another smaller project that I'm not totally happy with. I was trying to use up some magenta (!) yarn someone gave me, and came up with this little girl's cardigan (Ravelry link), which I plan to give to the daughter of a friend:

I'm actually finished with the knitting, but got a little demoralized because I ran out of yarn only two rows into the six-row bottom edging, so it curls. All I need to do is sew in ends, block, and find buttons for it. Maybe the blocking will help with the curling bottom edge? It's kind of cute, no? But totally not my cup of tea.

So I guess the good thing about all this is that I am knitting again, but still kind of bumbling along, without much success other than the Selbu mittens.

Opphold

The absurdity in my quest for permanent residency here in Norway continues to increase. When we left off the last time, I had received a letter on Christmas Eve from the police saying that I didn't have documentation for taking 250 hours of Norwegian instruction, and that I thus needed to get a waiver from my local municipality. Of course the local municipality was closed for the whole Christmas break, so I couldn't actually apply until after New Year's Day. Then, as is often the case, the one person responsible for this kind of think was so busy that she wasn't able to get to it until today, the sixteenth. This morning she called me with information that makes me really fear for the future of Norway, a country about to be strangled by bureaucracy.

You see, it turns out she can't actually give me a waiver regarding the 250 hours of Norwegian instruction because, through a strange legal quirk, she doesn't think I'm required to have it. Although I moved to Norway this time in 2008, I have spent lots of time here before, including in 1993-1995, while I researched and wrote my doctoral dissertation, and it seems that--at least according to the local municipality--I am officially in "the system" as a 1993-model rather than a 2008-model. Unfortunately, the police don't agree, and they still think I need either proof or a waiver. Gah!

After talking to my local bureaucrat, I called up my case worker in the police, and had a conversation about all this. She's not sure she can give me a residence permit herself, and thinks that she may have to forward my case to the Immigration Directorate itself. Luckily, in the time that has passed since I submitted my application, I have managed to get a PDF-file of my university transcripts from the US, and she thought maybe seeing those might help.

Both of the women I spoke with were very nice, and assured me there's no real danger of me getting deported. There is just no way either of them can, well, think independently and critically, and make a decision in a case like mine, which is outside of the norm. They are completely locked in to bureaucratic protocol. On the one hand, I totally understand, and am trying to be really patient, but on the other hand this makes me want to scream! I still can't believe that it's the language requirement that is holding me up here. Anyone who's met me knows I speak and write Norwegian pretty much as "near native" as you can get without actually being a native. It's just totally crazy.

Sort/hvitt

I've been struggling with how to sum up 2011 in a blog post. It was kind of a messy year, with lots of thinking and fretting and frustration, and very little to show for it. I think it's symptomatic for the year that I:

• have more yarn stashed and more unfinished knitting projects that usual, and was only able to finish small projects (and not even always then) 
• made lots of plans for remodeling our house, but did  none of them 
• was judged to have professor status in my field, but don't have a permanent position to go with it  
• did a lot of thinking about the cabin book, but had to put it on hold so I only have about 90 pages to show for it all 
• had a lot of publications, but none of them count for very much because of the venues in which they appeared (note to self: be pickier about where you publish from now on) 
• experienced two deaths in my extended family but wasn't able to go through any rituals of closure because I live abroad
• did everything I could to prepare to apply for the one job I really want, but still can't apply because it hasn't officially been advertised yet
• still don't have my permanent residence permit worked out yet
• struggled with sleep issues and got almost no exercise

2011 is a year I am happy to leave behind. I'm not a person who does well with loose ends, ambiguity, risk, or uncertainty. I haven't felt like I have much of a support network, and I've been edgy and unsure of myself for most of the year.

I don't really have any new years's resolutions, but I think what I need more than anything right now is more order in my everyday life. We took a big step in that direction over the Christmas break by finally installing wardrobes in our house-with-no-closets. We also slightly redistributed how we're using the rooms in our house to better suit our patterns of activity. Things still aren't 100%, but it's much better. We still need to get a few more shelves and wire baskets from IKEA to finish out the wardrobes (though we did pretty well in guessing our needs, actually). The more things falls into place, the easier it is to eliminate the remaining pockets of chaos. This also means knitting from stash, as the amount of yarn I have is really starting to make me anxious, grateful as I am for all the free yarn I was given.

I'm also really looking forward to work this semester. This will be my first semester without teaching since 2007, and I'm so excited to maximize the opportunity. I'm also really stoked about all the conferences I'll be participating in this year. I really want to make the most of the opportunity to network and present good work in a stimulating manner.

I'm trying to think positively. It's not all black. In fact, in my knitting at least, things have been very black and white recently. First up, I finished the Fana pullover for E:

This was out of that Peer Gynt yarn that my colleague gave me. The black was originally red. As you can see, the finished product (a size 12!) is very big on this 7-year-old, but not nearly as big as I was expecting. Yikes, he's growing fast. And yes, that is a Playstation controller in his hands, I'm afraid. Resistance was futile when both son and father insisted.

Next up is my first ever pair of Selbu mittens:

The pattern is from the "Selbustrikk" booklet (LVS-5) published by Rauma Ullvarefabrikk. It's a women's mitten (pattern number 7) made with Rauma "old series" 2-ply yarn and one 2mm circular needle. They're not blocked yet in the photograph, and in fact I'm cheating, since the second thumb isn't yet knitted. If I had waited until I finished the thumb it would have been too dark to take a picture today!

All in all, I was super happy with the yarn, and did a much better job of the shaping than I have in the past on mittens. I was also thrilled to find this two-sentence piece of advice in the pattern booklet:

For at mønsteret i småmønstrede flater, skråstriper og lus skal bli jevnt, må trådene ikke bytte plass. [...] Strikkes det med begge trådene på venstre pekefinger, må trådene ligge i samme rekkefølge hele tiden.

To keep the pattern in areas with small patterns, angled stripes and spots even, do not switch the order of the strands. If both strands are carried on the left finger, they have to stay in the same order the whole time.

I have been doing two-color knitting since I was sixteen, and I never knew this. It makes a huge difference in the finished product, though it means the two strands get much more tangled. Previously, I have always twisted in order to avoid tangles, without paying attention to where the colors were placed as I was carrying them. So yay for an old dog teaching herself a new trick!