Vips!

And just like that, I'm here in the US at the SASS conference. So far, even before the whole thing actually starts I've been able to see five of my favorite people on the planet, and that's only the beginning!

I'm struggling with jet lag and don't know when I'll be able to catch up on sleep (this hotel is incredibly noisy), but I'm happy to be here just the same.

Det er fullbrakt!

Pardon the biblical reference, but I'm feeling positively resurrected after having completed two huge knitting projects.

First, I unveil the Islender fisherman's sweater, modeled by a pleased KE in his best he-man pose:


Then there's the blocked birthday stole, which it turns out is impossible to photograph. (I'll try to snap its recipient when she has it on later this week). Here it is all glossy and folded up:

And if that isn't enough productivity, Anne's proofreading was so good that I was able to blaze through the Erlend Loe article revisions today and send it off too. Yay! I love clearing the decks!

Now I'm getting prepared for the conference, which mostly entails scoping out online yarn prices so that I'll know whether the sale prices at the shop in Madison, Lakeside Fibers, are good deals. Oh, and I suppose I'll have to revise the paper itself one last time too...

Juhuu!

Lots of good news to report today:

1. I finished knitting the reversible cable stole. Finished knitting it. That's right. Just a few ends to weave in. I thought it would never happen. I'm too afraid to block it, so I'm letting it sit for a couple of days. I may try on Saturday, if the weather is still sunny.

2. Yesterday I think I finally got over the worst hurdles in finishing the Erlend Loe article. I reread Roland Barthes' "La mort de l'Auteur" in English and Norwegian and was able to deal with the criticism of my use of Barthes in the earlier draft. I was interested to see that the two translations were quite different. Through the suggestion of a colleague I was able to email the Norwegian translator, who is a professor here at UiO, with some questions and he responded right away. And then I got up the nerve to ask another friend who is a great critical reader to proofread, and she agreed (waving to Anne!). That's a huge relief, and now I feel pretty confident that I'll have a defensible article pulled together to submit by the end of next week.

3. I also got positive feedback yesterday from a colleague on the paper I'm going to deliver next week at the SASS conference. I'm starting to get excited about the conference. The paper is the one on Ibsen's Når vi døde vågner. I look at four productions from the Norwegian National Theatre and compare the scenography to Ibsen's original stage directions.

4. The same colleague gave me good advice on my class for tomorrow. I was lamenting the fact that I couldn't get a discussion going last week on Kierlighed uden Strømper, and she suggested that I send out an email stating that we'll spend this week's class doing text analysis in groups. I am so glad - I was apprehensive about breaking out of the straight lecture mode, since that's what's standard here. It's good to know that I can change the format when necessary, and am looking forward to both the text analysis and the "meta" discussion of how we talk about literature analysis (they're going to have oral exams, so they need to develop some discourse skills).

5. I got my annual spring haircut today at the local hairdresser, Alfakrøll (good name), and I really like it! It's a longish bob that flips up a little at the back.


6. I just found out that I did not get elected vice president of my national professional organization. That would have been a PITA. I had to email someone and ask, which is a bit of a pain, but I wanted to know before the conference, since it would influence what I pack (now I don't have to stress out about trying to pull together impeccably professional clothes, and can just go semi-professional at the conference).

7. The weather is glorious and the yard is filled with green growth. Buds everywhere!

8. I started re-knitting my failed green cardigan. I have found another pattern that calls for the same weight of yarn. I'm just knitting directly from the pieces of the old work:


Not sure if it's "kosher" to do that, but I figure all the unevenness will come out when I wash the new sweater.

Fredag igjen

I can't believe how quickly this week went. Last Sunday we were all geared up for the end of the Easter break and a return to regular work routines, but E got really sick on Monday, with vomiting and a fever. He was really out of it, and KE and I were worried and sleep-deprived. I see now that the Easter break stressed me out more than it relaxed me, since what I really need to do is get some concrete work done. I feel so hopelessly behind. The list of what I need to write keeps getting longer:

• revise Erlend Loe article
• revise conference paper on Ibsen's Når vi døde vågner (When We Dead Awaken) and expand into a journal article
  
• review two different books on Ibsen
• write something (anything!) that will count as a beginning on the cabin book so that I'm not a total fraud for having this stipend
• write 2 or 3 articles on early modern texts so that I can claim expertise in that area (if a permanent job opens up here that will in all likelihood be one of the areas they're looking to cover - in that sense it was very fortuitous that I was able to teach the early modern course this term!)
  

I spent most of this week preparing a lecture on Johan Herman Wessel's Kierlighed uden Strømper (Love without Stockings) that had to be delivered today. I have cranked through a scary amount of difficult and interesting material at lightening speed this week, and don't really know if it has sunk in. I'm still trying to make sense of Vattimo (for the Loe article), and have now completed a kind of rebuttal to the Loe criticism (that he's masochistic, unreadable, or a reactionary misogynist). Next I need to clean up the analysis section of the article and add one little bit about how Vattimo's concept of "weak thought" opens up for a renewed (anti-organized religion) religiosity in the postmodern era. There's a really interesting reading of Naiv. Super. as pseudo-Christian allegory that I actually find convincing, and that perfectly illustrates Vattimo's point (I think, that is...).

Wessel turns out to be a bit of a find, meaning an "early modern writer" whose work I could conceivably write about. I totally loved all the meta-dramatic commentary in Kierlighed uden Strømper, and it is the first text this term that I laughed out loud at while reading. The amount of secondary sources is fairly modest (especially when compared with Hamsun, Holberg, or Ibsen), so I think I could actually come up with a fairly contained little project, maybe over the summer. It occured to me that it might be a good opportunity to read the first volume of Foucault's History of Sexuality (and his take on the 17oos) as a point of entry (he's mentioned in passing in an article on masculinity in the play, but not discussed in detail). There are some good articles on Kierlighed uden Strømper: the one on masculinity, one on clothing in the 1700s, one on the carnevalesque, one on the food motif and humor, etc., but nothing really thorough on the meta-dramatic elements of the play, so maybe that's what I can focus on?

My knitting has completely stalled. I'm too anxious about other things, and have too much reading to get through. But tonight is TV night (Nytt på nytt) so I hope to do a little on the stole. I have about half a ball of yarn left. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can...

Påske!

"Easter Still Life" with knitted eggs, sudoku, and a trashy magazine. I made KE buy the Se & hør at the grocery store, to his great embarrassment. But how could I resist, with a multi-page spread on the royal family's "cabin paradise"?!

We had our Easter celebration today, with KE's sister and nephew visiting. Very simple menu: ham, potato, onion and cheese "skillet" (the pyttipanna that I've been raving about), cinnamon rolls and grapes! E had fun running around the yard looking for eggs (first time for him) and we made rebuses for the grown ups. Very relaxed, very fun, and a good foundation for future, more elaborate celebrations (assuming we eventually get our act together!).

Afterwards we took a little walk around the neighborhood in the lovely sunshine, and now it's naptime for me.

Found a great craft website called Pickles with for example this cool idea for crocheting a lampshade. It's kind of the Norwegian equivalent of The Purl Bee, for those who are familiar with that one.

Otherwise, I've just been knitting like mad on the Islender (Look! It finally looks like a sweater!)...


...and watching lots of detective mysteries on TV, like all good Norwegians do at Easter. We've been disappointed so far, and are hoping that Poirot will save the week tonight. Even Lewis, which I usually like, was just too farfetched this time.

Escape from Sleeve Island!!!!

I did it! I finished the grotesquely long sleeves on KE's Icelander sweater! Now I only have about 4 inches to go on the body. Unbelievable that it could take so long to knit sleeves. Each one is about as much knitting as for a small child's sweater. I don't think of KE as all that tall--only about 6'2", but gee whillackers, the guy has long arms. The pattern (size large) called for 48 cm. Instead, I used the two sweaters KE has that actually have long enough arms as a gauge, and they were both about 55 cm. Okay, I know I'm making too big of a deal out of this, so I'll stop. I'm just so relieved to have escaped the purgatory of sleeve island...

Et dikt

I'm thinking about my former academic life in the U.S. a lot this morning. I found an email from the president of the university I used to work at explaining how the global financial crisis is affecting the budget there, and it looks terrible. They will be implementing unpaid "furloughs," which just means a mandated stretch of time without pay, and other drastic measures. The budget is tight at my new department here in Norway too, but here they're talking about making people pay for the free coffee, rather than take unpaid furloughs! I don't think that will happen during the four years I'm here.

Then on Ravelry I came across this amazing poem by Canadian poet Tom Wayman. It's one of the best things I've ever read about the teacher-student relationship, and about how we as teachers feel about our work:

Did I Miss Anything?

Question frequently asked by
students after missing a class

Nothing. When we realized you weren't here
we sat with our hands folded on our desks
in silence, for the full two hours

Everything. I gave an exam worth
40 per cent of the grade for this term
and assigned some reading due today
on which I'm about to hand out a quiz
worth 50 per cent

Nothing. None of the content of this course
has value or meaning
Take as many days off as you like:
any activities we undertake as a class
I assure you will not matter either to you or me
and are without purpose

Everything. A few minutes after we began last time
a shaft of light descended and an angel
or other heavenly being appeared
and revealed to us what each woman or man must do
to attain divine wisdom in this life and
the hereafter
This is the last time the class will meet
before we disperse to bring this good news to all people
on earth

Nothing. When you are not present
how could something significant occur?

Everything. Contained in this classroom
is a microcosm of human existence
assembled for you to query and examine and ponder
This is not the only place such an opportunity has been
gathered

but it was one place

And you weren't here

(from The Astonishing Weight of the Dead, 1994)

The last "Everything" stanza rings so true for me, for how I view my job as a literature professor. Things are so far very different here in Norway, though, since lectures aren't mandatory. I'll be interested to see how my attitude changes over time here.

In knitting news: I finished knitting and felting all the Easter eggs on Monday, and they turned out very sweet. Yesterday I slogged through some more of the last sleeve of KE's Islender. When I finish it, I will still have to add those 5 additional centimeters to the first sleeve, and about the same amount to the body before I can start assembling it. I'm dreading that, as I'll have to use the sewing machine, and that's always traumatic. Still a little under one skein to go on the stole. SO bored with these projects right now! I'm itching to cast on something new, of course, but have so far resisted the temptation.

That's mostly because I don't quite know what I want to do next. I'm going to rip out the green cabled cardigan and the shetland jacket, and make something else out of the yarn. I think I'll just make two vests out of the two colors of shetland yarn, rather than trying to figure out another two-color sweater pattern. I'm thinking of making the Ravelry standard, Thermal from Knitty, out of the green Finull yarn from the cabled cardigan, but am not super enthused about it. What I really want to make is something completely new, maybe even entailing buying new yarn (gasp). This cardigan from Sandnes really appeals to me, and I even went so far to buy the pattern. The brochure also contains this pattern, which may work for the 10 skeins of Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool that I haven't been able to figure out what to do with so far, which is how I justified buying it to myself. Looking forward to ripping out both projects, at any rate, as that's always fun for me, for some sick reason.

ETA: gosh, I completely forgot to mention the biggest news of all, which was that I ordered a sofa! We're so excited about taking over the whole house in 3 weeks, and obsessing over an appropriate sofa for the space was the way that excitement manifested in me. This is what we ended up with, which looks really boring on the website. What I like is the line of the wood "frame" at the bottom, and the variation in the fabric, neither of which come across very well online. It is scheduled to be delivered 13 May, the day after my Mom arrives for her visit. Yay!