Perhaps some of you have been able to tell through my words here and over on Instagram over the past year and a half, but Montreal hasn’t clicked for us quite the way that Norway did. Montreal was always a little bit of an experiment for us, and there have been some wonderful things about moving here (not least of which is the wonderfully warm knitting community I’ve felt a part of from the beginning – thank you to all of you here in Quebec and Canada who have made me feel that way), but for over a year we’ve actually been thinking about, and subsequently planning, a return to Norway. That’s been our goal for a little while, and the only question was one of when.

The question of when has now been answered – mid-June – because I’ve gotten a job as a PhD fellow in Trondheim. This is huge news for me and I am incredibly excited, not only for the move back to Norway but also for the project I’ll be working on once we get there. (For the curious, it’s in educational studies and it’s a pretty perfect combination of my background in both linguistics and TESOL.) I announced the move over on Instagram earlier this week and I can only say thank you to everyone who has shared comments of encouragement and excitement so far. Thank you, genuinely. It means a lot to me.

I started a pair of Trondheim mittens by Sofia Kammeborn earlier this month and used that photo to tease the announcement. For each of my master’s degrees I knit a pair of mittens for myself in celebration (you can find the project pages for them here and here) and so a Trondheim pair felt apropros for this next stage of my academic career. I chose yarns from my stash to knit them, choosing mostly Norwegian wool: two colors of Rauma Finull (dark blue and mustard), a very special skein of indigo dyed lambswool from Lofoten Wool (the light blue), and a skein of Finnish wool in the form of Tukuwool Fingering (the red). I’m particularly pleased with the Lofoten Wool here, because I bought this skein without knowing what I was going to do with it, and the price of that yarn makes it somewhat precious. So I think it’s really lovely to use it for a special project like this one.

Trondheim is a new city for us and while it will be challenging to start over in a new city yet again, I’m feeling very optimistic and looking forward to starting to get to know the city a little bit better. I love the Norwegian summer and I’m so happy I’ll get to experience it this year. I’ve technically been to Trondheim twice, but one of those times was passing through while traveling on the Hurtigruten, a stop that lasts only three or four hours, so the two days we were there last September account for most of my experience with the city (the city photos in this post were taken on those visits). Of course I know it’s a city with many, many knitters, and I’m looking forward to TRDstrikk‘s first festival this August (sidenote: it has been so fun to watch the festival scene grow throughout Norway since I first moved there four years ago!).

As always I am grateful to those of you who follow along here and elsewhere, and I’m looking forward to sharing snippets of Norway again as I get to know my new city.