Våryr

Spring has sprung, at least tentatively! Today was a gorgeous day, and we went out for a little walk around the neighborhood to find out what's been going on under all that snow, ice, and darkness  for the past half year. Nothing much, as it turns out, but as always I love looking at the houses and cabins in my neighborhood.

E was home sick from school for three days last week, which meant I got in plenty of knitting time on the Porticus pullover. Here it is, just before the last waist increase and before I'm supposed to start doing the pattern again as a bottom edging:

I can never get my camera to photograph the green of this yarn accurately, which drives me crazy.

Yesterday E was feeling pretty perky, so we took the ferry into Oslo to get a bagel (his standing request--one of the things he misses most about living in the US) and go to the Cultural Historical Museum, which E raced through, but seemed to enjoy anyway. Personally I think it's a pretty poor excuse for a museum. On past visits alone I had only ever been on the first floor, which documents Norwegian cultural history from the stone age up to medieval times. E was eager to race through the exhibitions on all four floors, and I was certainly not impressed by the hackneyed ethnographic displays they apparently haven't touched for the last 50 years or more. Now everyone knows I'm a huge fan of Norway and love living here, but this museum is a good example of what occasionally drives me crazy about this country. Norway is one of the richest countries in the world, and they spend millions on all kinds of things, but they seem to have no idea what to do to improve this museum. The first floor displays are exactly as I remember them from the early 1990s, including the ridiculously stupid embroidered goddess-y "art" installations that are supposed to do ... something? ... to enhance the Viking era display. Grr!

But really, the point of the expedition was to get E out of the house and give him some new experiences, and in that sense it was a totally successful day. He bought his own orange juice on the ferry ride home, and you could tell it was a big deal to stand in line and pay all by himself.

Digg

Oooh, I'm totally loving the Porticus pullover! At this point (just a few inches into the yoke), I'm thinking I want to make one of these in every color. I just saw a beautiful black one on Ravelry that made me think that this would be the perfect thing for all that recycled charcoal gray yarn I have tried twice to make something out of.

Here's what the turtleneck and beginning of the yoke looks like:

It's really stiff with this shetland yarn, but based on my experience with the Bulgarian pleated skirt, which I made with the same yarn held single, it should really soften up when washed. I can barely put this down, and I'm especially jazzed about the yoke increases all the way around (instead of the usual raglan shaping, which I'm getting a little tired of...). Stay tuned!

Ganske mye garn, gitt!

My next yarn foray in London was to I Knit London, south of the Thames near Waterloo Station. My colleagues at UCL were appalled to hear that I had ventured into enemy territory, but actually I really dug the no-nonsense vibe down there. It kind of reminded me of some of the Mexican neighborhoods I've been to in cities like Chicago and Phoenix. Which is to say: yeah, a little scruffy, but also lively and full of interesting things to see and do. I didn't have my camera along with me, so I didn't get any snaps of the shop or of Lower Marsh Street where it's located. The selection itself was a bit disappointing, at least for someone looking for British yarns and with my very narrow tastes. I ended up buying a gorgeous skein of Canadian Handmaiden Seasilk:

It's the most amazing green. What sold me on this yarn was the store sample of the ubiquitous Swallowtail shawl by Evelyn A. Clark. There are something like 10,000 of these registered on Ravelry, and the sample in the store made out of this yarn was to die for. I started knitting it almost immediately (and knit the whole way on the train from London to Edinburgh last Friday) and found it pretty easy, considering that it's lace.

As everyone always says, it's almost impossible to take good pictures of lace in process--it just looks like a blobby mess--so there probably won't be any photo documentation until after it's finished, I'm afraid. But I promise that I have made it through the fourteen repeats of the bud pattern, have dutifully inserted a lifeline, and am letting it sit for a few days before starting in on the Lily-of-the-Valley pattern with its legendary "nups." Should be interesting.

In Edinburg I tracked down the K1 Yarns Knitting Boutique, which was as charming as could be from  the outside:

(It's the bright blue storefront) For some reason, however, I remained for the most part un-charmed by the selection here, again given that I was looking for British yarns. They did have a fair amount of British yarn (after all, they produce their own line of yarns), but there is something about the color palette they offered here that left me cold. In fact, I found the colors themselves surprisingly (and off-puttingly) cold. I really wanted to buy at least a skein of something to support a small independent yarn shop, but the only things I came close to liking were produced in Germany I think.

Since I had to go to a department store or two anyway to look for other things, I stopped off at the yarn department in Jenner's of Edinburgh. Much to my delight, I found a bag of discontinued Rowan Silky Tweed on sale for 50% off. It was a beautiful blue-ish teal, so even though I have more than enough sweater projects to work on, I snapped it up.

The saleslady there gushed about how fabulous this yarn is to work with, so I'm excited to give it a try. I may make an Hourglass Sweater to replace the one I frogged a couple of years ago. I always really liked the fit of the one I made, and it was an incredibly useful garment to own (unlike many of my sweater projects). We'll see.

But for right now, I'm starting in on a different project entirely, a pullover called Porticus (Ravelry link here) that I'm going to knit out of all that green shetland yarn I bought in Denmark a couple of years ago. The yarn is a light fingering weight which I'll double to get the right weight. This design is pretty much perfect for me: it's top down, has a high neck, waist shaping, and mostly plain stockinette but with some interesting detailing. I really hope it works out, especially since I'm not all that happy with how the Graystone tunic turned out. I finished it while in London (hence the starting of the Swallowtail):

It almost works. Unfortunately I got worried that it would be too tight over the hips so I did a couple of extra increases that in the end turned out to just make it look lumpy. I'm going to wash and block it and see if that helps at all. If it doesn't, it's really not that much to rip out and reknit. The problem of course is that spring is coming and it is pretty much already too warm to wear this. Ah well, there's always next winter!

ETA: someone on Ravelry recommended a different yar shop in Edinburgh, McAree Brothers. Filed away for future reference:)

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...