Class of 1987

Welcome to any Lowellites stopping by! (My 20th high school reunion is in October.)

Hope to see you at the reunion. Here is a brief history of what I have been doing the past twenty years:

Phase One - On My Own
After graduation I moved into my own Sunset in-law apartment and started working full-time for Banana Republic. I wasn't sure what I wanted to major in so I took some GE night classes at City College.

Phase Two - Married Too Young
I got married at 20 to someone I met at church who wanted to be a minister. We were poor. He finally got into seminary in Berkeley, but it didn't work out. That was my one year of not living in San Francisco. During this time I worked for a couple different retail companies and took night classes off and on.

Phase Three - She's Single Again
I got divorced and moved back to San Francisco. I got into cycling. I decided I needed to go to school full time and finally get my degree, so I quit my job and went to CCSF and then S.F. State.

Phase Four - Party Time
You know that partying you all did in college? Well I didn't get around to it until I was in my late '20s. I was working part-time and enjoying uppper division classes in literature and art. I got married to a Sunset boy. We had a lot of fun going to Hawaii and taking road trips.

Sadly, I lost my father to lung cancer just a month before graduation. This Lowellite didn't take a traditional route, but I did finally graduate magna cum laude at the ripe old age of 32.

Phase Five - Mom-o-Rama
A part-time job at the VA Hospital turned into an interesting opportunity. The scientist I worked for was also a former astronaut who was sending an experiment on the Space Shuttle. She made a documentary about it, so I got to learn all about video production and go to Cape Canaveral to tape and watch the launch of the fateful STS-107 mission.

Meanwhile I got divorced. Yes, again. I decided I needed some kind of strategy because I really wanted to have kids, but it just didn't happen in either of my first marriages. I felt almost jinxed. So I told my now husband that I would not get married again unless a baby was on the way. I actually had visions of getting married in the delivery room.

In September 2005 I quit my job to work on our general contracting business. I found out I was pregnant in November, we took our honeymoon in Scandinavia in April '06, and got married in May, two months before my due date. I chickened out about the delivery room ceremony, and a good thing, too, because the baby almost got born in the truck on the way to the hospital. Boy has life changed in the past year!

First Rosemaling

I took my first "official" Rosemaling class. (I had a great first lesson at my Anna K. Daughters of Norway rosemaling day last month, and did a couple practice sessions on my own). I am very happy with it, but I have to admit that the photo makes it look much more impressive than it is in person. Please do not click on the photo, leave it nice and small. Thank you.

Rosemaling is Norwegian folk painting. This is the Telemark style. You can learn about Rosemaling here. I have always admired Rosemaling, but never considered trying it. I have never painted and don't consider myself "artistic". But I have gained confidence in trying new things since I took a basic drawing class a couple years ago. Fortunately I was able to get an afternoon "off" from the baby one day to check out our Rosemaling group. They were very encouraging, I had fun and was hooked. And fortunately my husband was nagging me to spend more time away from the baby so I bravely signed up for an all-day class.

Our instructor was the accomplished Marley Wright Smith. It was daunting at first, but I'm glad she had us beginners do a "real" piece. We did some practice strokes, but she encouraged us to jump right in and paint on the wood.

I went into today's class feeling pretty confident, but that feeling left me almost immediately. I could not get my practice strokes to look as good as my previous ones, and when I laid down my first strokes on the wood they looked awful. I think every project has it's discouraging moments, though, when you feel like giving up. I pushed ahead, believing Marley when she said the detail work would bring it all together.

Well, the line work was fun but I still was not happy with my craftsmanship. Marley put in some strokes to bring it together, and fixed my "root", which had gotten lost. It really came together when I got brave and painted the border around the edge. I had to leave class a bit early, but was lucky enough to find the baby napping when I got home, so I fixed a few more things, scrawled my name and called it done. I just remembered - Marley said to paint the back, too.

First Felting Foray - Fun!

I'm working away on de-stashing and finishing projects. This one was started at least four years ago. It is a "Slimline Tote" by Two Old Bags. I don't know for sure the yarn anymore, but it feels and looks exactly like Cascade Quatro.

I picked this one back up with dread because I had dropped it thinking I didn't have enough yarn and because I couldn't figure out the pattern. Well, I had just enough yarn so that I didn't have to use the new skein of a slightly different pink that I bought last time I had tried to finish it. The plan was to have one pink & one blue handle if necessary. I was also pleasantly surprised to find that I was almost done, and figured out immediately what I was doing wrong the second time I got stuck. The top is finished with I-Cord and I was reading SSK as slip a stitch, slip a stitch, knit the next stitch. Yeah, that gets you nowhere as far as binding off.


Anyhow, I finished, took a before photo, and washed it. Wow! How cool! It shrank right down, and I washed it again to make it tighter. A-Maze-Ing. All my errors? Gone. Holes? Sealed. Big crappy stitches on the handle and the bottom? Invisible. Felting is so cool. My mother and husband were amazed at the transformation. And I got a needed lift. Both a project quickly finished, and realizing that my knitting is improving.

The before photos? Yeah, well, the baby knocked my camera to the floor and it doesn't work at the moment. But I took a photo onto the card in my video camera. Uh, no I didn't.

And um, yeah, I noticed it doesn't look like the photo with the pattern. I don't know for sure but I think I knit way to loosely. I am a notoriously loose knitter (ha, ha), so I probably didn't have to strive to knit with a loose gauge, could have just knit normally. Or maybe I didn't need the extra yarn because I decided to make it smaller? Just bad pattern reading? Or perhaps if I felted it many more times, as the pattern says it to? But I like the shape and the texture as is. It won't hold papers well, but it will be great for knitting.

Now I have to decided what to make with the Quatro.

I dream in (yarn) color

It started about a month ago. I had a dream about green and purple yarn. I went to a LYS and bought some Koigu to add to the Koigu stash. The green was just like my dream, but I couldn't find the exact purple. That's okay, I'm going to make a rainbow toddler hat or sweater or somesuch, someday. The dream didn't specify a project.

I'm doing two yarn swaps with folks I met on the Knitty Coffee Shop. One is for Rowan Kid Silk Haze in Grace. I'm thinking about making a Birch shawl. So I've been researching the pattern pros and cons, one of which is casting on 299 stitches. I woke up yesterday from a dream that I had successfully cast on the beautiful pink yarn. (I don't even have it yet!)

Last night's dream was not so pleasant. I was more like the one where it is the end of the semester and I realize there is a class I quit attending after a month, and tomorrow is the final. In the dream my blue sweater is full of dropped stitches. But which blue sweater is not clear. Last thing before bed I was working on a baby sweater in blue Manos del Uruguay. But yesterday I also was looking a the parts of sweater I never finished, in a very similar color blue. I knit all the parts for a cardigan from Stich 'N Bitch and even blocked them. I guess I didn't like the way the crocheted mohair trim was looking so I quit. Sheesh. There's no way I'm going to frog it, and I draped it on by body, seems like it fits. I should just finish! I like the colors and have cute cat buttons.

I wonder what tonight's dream will be?

Syttende Mai

Gratulerer med dagen, Norge.

Today is Norway's Constitution Day. Read more about how it is celebrated here.

We celebrated here in San Francisco last weekend at Norway Day. Kenneth wore the bunad we got in Norway last year. He had fun.

Happy Mother's Day

Sending a bunch of hearts (and viking ships) to all you mothers and mothering types out there!


I made these with my Rycraft cookie presses. I've been collecting them over the years. Although not made in Scandinavia they were inspired by Scandinavian (and German) wood carved presses. I grew up using them, maybe because the company started in Oregon.

Happy Birthday to George, Abe & Me

Where's the Viking Stuff?

Looking at my blog, it doesn't seem like there's been much "Viking" or Scandinavian stuff going on. Actually there has been, but most of it is on Kenneth's Blog, and some is yet to come.

• Check out Kenneth's Baptism which had a Norwegian theme.
• Video of the Viking Julfest we participated in. Photos.
• There will be photos of Viking jewelry I've been helping make for my Daughters of Norway Lodge. We will be selling it at Norway Day.
• The baby hat projects continue. See acorn and pumpkin variations in this post. Although not Scandinavian, they are part of the process of learning how to make my own patterns. A Norwegian hat is in the works.

My Stuff Bags

A friend got a group of her friends together to make blankets for My Stuff Bags. They give bags of comfort items to kids who have been taken out of their homes for various reasons. I started this blanket on our Thanksgiving road trip, finished it a few weeks ago, and finally wove in the ends last week.






The pattern is "Easy Eyelet Washcloth or Blanket" from Knitting for Baby. I used Patons Melody in Electric Blues which I found at the local fabric shop. I thought these colors would be okay for a boy or a girl and that using a washable acrylic made sense. It took six balls, since I used a 10 needle instead of the 15's called for, to make a roughly 40" square.

Cloth Diapers

We decided to use cloth diapers as much as possible for a variety of reasons. I discovered that they are pretty hi-tech these days, and decided to try All-In-Ones for Kenneth. Instead of separate diapers and covers, an AIO consists of a waterproof layer, two layers of diaper fabric, and an internal pad of eight layers. And the whole thing just "velcros" on and afterwards goes in the washer and dryer. There are also long, foldable inserts (no picture) made of diaper fabric and flannel. This allows extra absorbency to be placed appropriately for boys & girls without a diaper that would take an hour and a half to dry. As it is with the eight layers they take an hour.

They are quite expensive to purchase, but I like to sew, so I got the pattern at Very Baby and the materials at One Stop Diaper Shop. They are very labor intensive, and the situation was made worse by the enormous belly in the way. If K. hadn't arrived two weeks "late" I'm not sure how many he would have had.

He grew out of the initial newborn set pretty quickly:















With the help of friends and family I made another batch in size small. (Okay, there are about five more partially completed). He is about to outgrow them, too.





















I made white, blue, and periwinkle. That's part of the fun of making your own - colors. Note the coordination with his shirt. I used the scraps to make some waterproof cloths for him to sleep on and such.

The materials for the medium size have been sitting here for at least ten days. Ugh. At least they are supposed to fit up to twenty-some pounds, I think.

Baby Got Blog

In case you didn't hear, Kenneth has his own blog. (I have removed the link. Friends and family, email me and I will send it to you).
Head over and check it out. He's much better at replying to comments than I am.

Here's a photo of that Strawberry Hat I made, as modeled by Kenneth:

Six Weeks

Kenneth now weighes 11.5 lbs. Why? Because...

Two Weeks

Kenneth had his two week check up today. The goal was to be back to his birth weight of 6lbs 12oz. Goal exceeded!! He weighed in at 8lbs 7oz. Observe the chubbiness (and lethargy):



Compared to just a few days ago:

Catching up Posting Finished Items

Here's my second tapestry:



And this is a Feather & Fan shawl I made using the pattern from Cheryl Oberle's "Folk Shawls". It's done in Frog Tree Alpaca. You can see me wearing it down in the wedding pics in the June archive.

Kenneth Edward III

He's here!! Arrived Tuesday July 25th at 2:15 a.m. 6lbs 12oz 18.5"

Here are some photos in chronological order:


Welcome














Recovering











Mini-Ed?













Dad's a natural












We're sprung from hospital

40-Week Belly Cast

Or, how we amused ourselves with plaster bandages, water, plastic wrap, and body oil on my "due" date.

Hippie Preggo Wedding

Baby on Board

My new truck and my 32-week belly

Moments in Scandinavia

Coldest Moment: Bird Island of Runde


Tackiest Moment: The Little Mermaid

The Best Part of the Trip

We've been home for a week, and looking back at all the great places we saw, the family farm, and islands were the best. I can't thank my cousin, Øystein, and his wife, Heather, enough. Not only did he help with my trip planning, they brought their two-month-old daughter on a road trip to show us around my great-grandfather's birthplace. Not to mention cooking for us!