...Because Saan says so! Visioenen van chocopotten met vikinghelmen.
25-05-2009
'T is laat, ik typ in welke taal mij voor het moment het best uitkomt
It's approximately a quarter to one at night, Monday morning/Sunday evening. I'm well on my way with my exam studies, so well, in fact, that I found time around 6 pm to pick up my knitting bag and get started on something new (finished the latest swatch for the swatch blanket yesterday). Since you can't keep going on the same project without getting bored and the blanket isn't in any danger of falling off any needles, I thought I'd try something a bit more summery: a headband. Ravelry, being my friend, gives me the option to go "What yarn did I buy on a whim?" (Errr, the entire stash, currently quite large since the poncho project got incorporated into the blanket project, the leftover yarn being about 4 and a half skein of 95 m each) "What needles do I have within reach?" (Three mostly impractical sizes and 5 mystery double pointed needles, three of those bent) "What do I feel like making?" (Something that involves learning something new.)
Enter i-cord.
Remember those tubes you make with the mushrooms with a hole and 4 pins? Remember my 8.4 m long scarf? That's, basically, the principle of I-cord. My current pattern (okay, mostly improvised pattern) demanded I start with that. (Read: the majority of patterns did, and I felt like keeping some options open). So I got started. Cursed. hurt myself. Learned. Finally got the hang of it. Talked to a friend while making the thing grow, ever-so slowly. I'm nearly done with the first bit and I notice it's four hours later. Oops.
I'm not sure if it's the proper name for it, but I call it New-Fibre-Technique-Syndrome: I learn something new, sort of, and spend a bit more time than I realise is passing getting it into my fingers, perhaps raising some eyebrows along the way as I improvise a little.
Brings back the memory of learning how to knit over here.
My host mom was enthusiastic about my finger knitting: okay, so the scarf was hugely impractical, but it did its job, I loved it and it looked good when I finally did get it on. So I thought, great, let's try real knitting now.
I'd bought some horrible baby merino wool in pinks and reds, which I discovered I couldn't fingerknit with. I'd learn how to knit with that. The internet told me how to make an awesome scarf with just the knit stitch. The internet was my friend. Simple, right?
Next problem was my lack of knitting needles. YFU brainwashing demands I ask my host parents for help. My upbringing and the secret exchange student code demands I try and have a more-than-likely risk of ending up with something mutated or possibly 'unique' before doing so. My host mom has a stash that is the envy of most knitting shops and the needles to go with it. It seemed sacrilegous to ask for a loan of needles while I was using the cheapest wool EVER and had no idea what I was doing.
Simplest solution: go to the store, buy needles. Er... right. Shampoo, shower gel, deodorant, bus card renewal, cafetaria snacks, yarn for a finger-knitted plushie... all little things that had gnawed my self-imposed weekly budget into something that might buy me another skein of wool or two, but not knitting needles. I went into the proper yarn shop for the first time and bought 4 skeins of ever-so-soft acrylic yarn in pastel colors. Week balance: 9 kroner to spare, but I had something to do my first real project with.
Back home, I experimented with stuff I found in my room. Wooden pencils: hugely uncomfortable. Fresh, blue ball-point pens: perfect, apart from the fact that they have to be used without caps and started turning my fingers blue as they got ink into them. The next step was the ever so dangerous one of 'what substitute for my substitute is within reach?'.
Enter the two pen cases that had somehow snuck their way into my after-sent luggage. They had mechanical pencils with almost the exact same feel as the pens. Unravel the pen project, start over on the pencils. It looked 'not quite as it should', which is Exchange Student International Linguo for 'I'm probably screwing up, but I will by GOD learn this and am not stopping now'. Parents skyped while I was figuring it out, laptop flipped open and on the knitting video.
"What are you doing?" "Knitting. I think. It looks weird. Look at this zig-zag." "Your needles look weird. And don't seem to match." "They're pencils." "Pencils?" "Yah. You sent them in September. Mom, you know how to knit. Is this okay?" "...What on earth is that yarn?" "Baby merino sock yarn." "No wonder it looks weird. Yes, you're probably doing it right, don't worry."
Grainy webcam picture in bad lighting said I probably wasn't screwing up, so I took the yarn and pencils with me in the car for the 6 hour drive to the no-electricity, no-running-water cabin. Norway, being the knitting country it is, has the habit of teaching EVERYONE how to knit. My learning it so late, at the age of nineteen, inspired curiosity in everyone but the eleven-year-old host brother.
Thirteen-year-old host brother: "What are you doing?" Me: "Knitting. Trying to, anyway. Looks a bit weird, doesn't it?" Brother: "What kind of needles are that? Belgian ones?" Me: "Err... My drawing pencils, actually." Host dad, from behind the wheel, looks into the rearview mirror at us. Dad: "You're drawing while you're knitting?" Me: "No, I just pushed the leads back in and am using the pencil's shape for needles." Dad: "You need *knitting needles* for knitting, Sarah. Me: "Not possible with the budget until next week." Dad: "Okay. Are you sure it's possible to knit with those?" Me: "It's working so far. I just don't know how to bind off."
We stopped at the host grandmother, who fed us and gave us beds for the night. When I got out my knitting during the yathzee game, she fairly had a heart attack.
"Good Lord, what are you doing?" "Knitting. A bit longer, and I can make this into hand warmers, I think." "Are those pens?" "Pencils, actually."
I got stared at in morbid fascination for the last five rows of my hard work, until I had to admit to this woman, the family's knitting guru, providing the three generations with hand-knitted socks (including two pairs for me, plus a sweater that was too big on me and I didn't dare tell her about) and repairing age-old knitted clothing for free, that I had no idea how to cast off. She showed me the first two, three stitches, and let me do the rest.
"Shall I get some--" I snapped the end of the yarn with a short tug, as its price and durability were very similar.
Me being done, she told her son, my host dad, to get her knitting pins, as if to demonstrate to me what the 'proper' tools were. I got a needle to tuck in the ends of my work and sew it into one sad little hand warmer as she sorted them.
Dialects are not the friend of an exchange student who has finally 'sort of' grasped the slippery language of their host country. She talked. And talked and talked. Then she went to the kitchen, tied the five mostly similar dpns she'd found together with a rubber band and handed them to me. I'd understood the bit that went something like "I'll make sure you have something to knit properly with". The look I got was one that seemed to suggest I was a poor, confused child, not knowing well enough to knit with knitting needles instead of drawing tools. I took the needles, tried to cast on, failed miserably, and got allowed to first knit another haphazard hand warmer, which was done a lot faster than the first one.
The next day, at the cabin, I spent some time in trial and error before concluding that the sock needles hated me, rett og slett. Or maybe the yarn. Most likely both.
The rest of the time got spent doing cabin-y things, occasionally going back to the hateful dpns. A trip to the nearest large town gave me the chance to nip down to the local husflidsbutikk, the local knitting mekka. After some difficulty finding the blasted thing, I discovered that the big needles were on sale.
My mother calls me a child of extremes. I don't quite get what she means by that when she says it, but in retrospect, I think it has something to do with my first pair of my needles being 15 mm thick. If you think my host father's expression was priceless when he saw me on the pencils, you should have seen his face when he picked me off the parking with two very pink, very large needles. My host mother, who we'd picked up in the town's train station, laughed a little, and we went home, me mostly being happy with my needles.
I cast on, with the acrylic. Lo and behold, the thicker, tighter yarn was more forgiving that the merino, the thicker needles slid over each other smoothly and cleanly, unline the sock needles. I got comments about the needles. I ignored them. My scarf grew, ever-so-slowly, into something pretty and soft. My hand warmers hung wet and forgotten and unloved over the kitchen stove.
My host dad's cousin and his son visited. Hans Tarjej, the son, agreed with the youngest host brother that such big needles were madness. The cousin answered my host dad's comment "Look at how big those needles are" with "So what, *woman's name* used to knit with some at least twice that big.".
Ha, take that, I wasn't the only person crazy enough to buy them.
After the scarf was finished, my host mom suggested I add a fringe. The scarf became even more pretty, hiding my sloppy cast-on and rather thick cast-off beautifully between tiny tassels in alternating colors. I made hand and wrist warmers by taking two yarns at once in one stitch, and these worked better than the ones still hanging over the stove. The last of the yarn got used to make a birthday gift for the (biological) little sister, slightly shorter than mine, and in blue where mine was green, green where mine was blue. It worked.
Back home from the cabin, I got into knitting like it was going out of style. I wanted a bag. I tried the merino again. As useless as before. I tried the string I'd used as a cheap crochet substitute (later, I'd discover the leftover basket at the yarn shop had better alternatives) on the two straight sock needles. An idea was born. 5 balls of string later, I had the base and shoulder strap for a bag, which was slightly too stretchy, and two, three skeins of alpaca/sheep blend gave it the rest of its body. The bag was floppy and too stretchy and needed buttons. I'd do that later. In the meanwhile, I was going to learn a lot more.
Now it's a few months later. Due to circumstances, the bag is in Belgium, with the flowers I learned to crochet in it. My scarves are there. My crochetet hat is here. My snakes are here. My pea-green ball of cotton with mini-crochet hat is here. My knitting is here. It's nearly two in the morning, and I'm going to bed... as soon as I finish my 8-10 inches of i-cord.
Ik leef dus nog steeds. We hebben eventjes tijd op school, dus bij deze nog een lijst-vormige update.
-We zijn nog eens naar de hytte geweest, volgens klassiek patroon. Deze keer wel wat meer licht dan de vorige keer. -We zijn twee keer naar Trysil, grootste skigebied in Noorwegen geweest. Ik ging de eerste keer mee met de langrennski groep, aangezien ik daar het minst kans had om me permanent mee te beschadigen, en kreeg de klassieke Leo-en-Appelsien-Met-Chocomelk uitstap. Één keer fameus uitgegleden en op m'n staartbeentje geland, dat deed fameus pijn, maar ging over. De tweede keer had ik teveel pijn in mijn ingegroeide teennagel om mee te gaan en heb ik me daar een haaknaald gekocht en me daarmee geamuseerd. -Ik kan nu dus haken. -Ik heb het eerste breiproject afgewerkt (een slappe schoudertas) en ben aan het tweede bezig, dat langzaaaam in elkaar zal komen en goed is voor technieken en steken te oefenen. -Alex kan niet naar België komen wegens geen zakgeld voor een paspoort. BOEEEEE voor het Britse paspoortsysteem en weinig zakgeld. Jeeeeeeej voor skype en msn. -Anders is jarig geweest. Filmavond! Hij leek eerst niet zo enthousiast met zijn cadeautje van 'chocolade en maar één flesje bier', maar de eerstvolgende schooldag kreeg ik toch de boodschap dat die chocolade keilekker was geweest. -Ik ben een weekje in België geweest, iedereen weet waarom -Na dat weekje België is de Russe-tijd begonnen, die deze zondag zal aflopen. Dat aflopen gaat pijn doen, want ik amuseer me hier enorm met de zottigheten die we mogen/moeten/kunnen uithalen. Ik ben betekend geweest, heb me al ziekgelachen, ben met klassevriendjes naar Noorwegens grootste pretpark geweest op een avond waar er alleen Russ werden toegelaten en heb al 21 knopen verdiend, met 20 als doel. In andere delen van het land drijven ze het echt wel te ver, maar hier zijn we volgens iedereen behalve onze leerkrachten VEEEEEL te lief en braaf. Ik neem dat als een compliment op. -Mijn uitwisseling is bijna op z'n eind en IK WIL NOG NIET NAAR HUUUUUIIIIIS!!!! -Ik ben aan de voorbereidingen voor het YES begonnen -Ik heb vandaag mijn schriftelijke examenmelding gekregen. Ik moet 'op' in Noors als Tweede Taal voor Taalminoriteiten en Sociale Wiskunde 2. De anderen hebben het allemaal veeeel erger. -Van het ene extreem naar het ander: de sneeuw is weg, en het is hier prachtig weer, bijna geen regen, altijd warm genoeg met een Russesweatertje over een T-shirt. Vandaar dat ik er een tweede heb gekocht. -Licht: de zon heeft zich herpakt van de winter en overcompenseert nu voor haar luiigheid met EXTRA veel licht. Rond elf uur 's avonds kan je het nu min of meer donker noemen, maar de vogeltjes beginnen buiten mijn kamer al te fluiten om de zonsopgang aan te kondigen om TWEE UUR IN DE MORGEN. En dit is een maand van de zonnewende af. Keitof op sommige gebieden (extra veel licht om met vriendjes bij te ravotten) en keistom op anderen (als ik een nachtje moet doordoen aan huiswerk dat te lang werd uitgesteld, ga ik soms slapen als het zonnetje mijn kamer al verlicht).
Met mij gaat alles goed, ik ga me hier nog eens extra veel amuseren in mijn laatste weken en word dan al gillend terug naar België gesleurd. Tot dan, als ik tegen dan geen berichtje meer post.
foto's van de russ staan op facebook: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=19837&id=1514612937
It's approximately a quarter to one at night, Monday morning/Sunday evening. I'm well on my way with my exam studies, so well, in fact, that I found time around 6 pm to pick up my knitting bag and get started on something new (finished the latest swatch for the swatch blanket yesterday). Since you can't keep going on the same project without getting bored and the blanket isn't in any danger of falling off any needles, I thought I'd try something a bit more summery: a headband. Ravelry, being my friend, gives me the option to go "What yarn did I buy on a whim?" (Errr, the entire stash, currently quite large since the poncho project got incorporated into the blanket project, the leftover yarn being about 4 and a half skein of 95 m each) "What needles do I have within reach?" (Three mostly impractical sizes and 5 mystery double pointed needles, three of those bent) "What do I feel like making?" (Something that involves learning something new.)
Ik leef dus nog steeds. We hebben eventjes tijd op school, dus bij deze nog een lijst-vormige update.
