Writing this on my birthday – I’m 49 – and all I can say is, if getting older gets worse from hereon in, I may just ask for a refund – if only I can find the receipt!
Gansey news first, and you can see that it’s starting to shape up nicely. (Though one thing about a gansey with lots of cables, it’s easier to photograph as the cables act as supporting struts, keeping it from curling up on itself like this one does.) I usually do the back first, putting off the curved neckline on the front till last (I also work on the principle that the side of the yoke I do first is something of a “dry run”, and that the second one will be better, in which case the best side should be on the front). In this case, though, it means that the initials will be on the back -but does that matter?
Had a nasty experience yesterday, flashes of light and some big, very noticeable floaters in my right eye. (You know what floaters are, right? They’re the little black specks that sometimes float across your vision when you look at the sky on a clear day, a bit like microbes under an out-of-focus microscope.) Well, this is one of the warning signs of a detached retina, something to which I, as as a short-sighted person who’s had cataract operations, am at increased risk of. So it was off to A&E, and a long wait with all the Saturday afternoon sports injuries, including a little girl who looked like she was the school under-7s bare knuckle fighting champion (and if she’s the champion, I’d hate to see the girl who lost, etc.).
Which culminated in the most unpleasant eye examination of my life, and let me tell you I’ve had a few. With pupils dilated to the size of a myopic barn owl out hunting on a moonless night I had to keep my eyes open without blinking while the doctor shone a light powerful enough to illuminate football stadiums straight into them. And then she held a contact lens against the eye for extra magnification, and did it all over again, the heartless swine. I had more tears pouring down my face and soaking my shirt than when they cancelled Twin Peaks all those years ago.
Anyway, the good news is, she said, I don’t have a detached retina. But why then the flashes, I asked? Oh, she said, that’s just a vitreal detachment when the last of the jelly in my eye is tearing itself away from the back of the eye like old wallpaper off a wall. The flashes will gradually disappear as the last bits detach themselves. (Hang on a minute, you think, and this is the good news?) The floaters, as debris that comes with the detachment, are there to stay, and either my brain will just tune them out over time, or “you’ll just have to work something out”.
So there we are. Everything I look at at the moment has swirls of specks whizzing across it, like one of the space battles from Star Wars, lots of zippy movement and flashing lights. And, God, I find myself wondering, if this is what it’s like at 49, what on earth will 50 bring?
Apologies for the shorter blog this week, but, like the pictures, it’s all being done on my iPhone – which is brilliant little device, and I don’t know where I’d have been without it (literally, as it’s got both maps and a location device), but it’s not conducive to hammering out reams of deathless prose.
More tangible progress this week, the advantages of clean living and a non-existant social life. The pattern is slowly becoming clearer too: to paraphrase the late composer Vaughan Williams, I don’t know if I like it, but it’s what I meant!
There are a mere 55 steps leading up to my flat, and I’ve discovered the best way to deal with this is to make base camp somewhere between the first and second floors, and lay in a store of oxygen cylinders for the rest of the ascent. They say we normally use just 5% of our lungs, but I’m definitely pushing the other 95% on the last flight, I can tell you; the sound of my ragged wheezing is so loud the other occupants sometimes come out to see who’s sawing through a giant redwood on their landing.
I’m adjusting to life in the city quite well, as I live a mere 15 minutes’ walk from the National Archives where I work, and in the morning can stop for a coffee to take with me if I choose. Sure we haven’t got computers or a phone yet so no one can get hold of us, but I’m not complaining as that way no one can get hold of us.
Well, as Sam Gamgee says at the end of the Lord of the Rings, I’m back (though in my case I return from my first week at the National Archives in Edinburgh, not from watching a bunch of elves, a wizard and a hobbit depart from the Grey Havens; otherwise the similarity is very close).
If you look at this week’s photos you will no doubt be wondering why I bothered, since I’ve only managed half an inch in the 10 days or so since my last blog. But in my defence, though it may only be half an inch, it’s an important one. Let me explain.
First of all, I’ve reached the dividing point between front and back. So the gussets are half-done, and will be placed on holding yarn until I’m ready to pick them up again when I start the sleeves. I’ve made these gussets slightly longer than in previous ganseys, so they span 25 stitches across at the widest point, not my usual 21-23 stitches. 23-25 seems to have been the traditional width; I always start off with the intention of making them slightly longer but end up leaving it too late! (The reason the gussets aren’t on holders yet is simply because the yarn I use for the purpose is in an unopened box in Edinburgh, along with the rest of my life.)
Secondly, I’ve decided to stick to my original intention of completing the gansey in this pattern, and not chickening out and switching pattern just because this pattern isn’t working out the way I’d hoped. I finally managed to take a picture that shows the effect I’ve been describing in this blog over the last few weeks, but which previous photos haven’t picked up. (Forgive the slightly blurry monochrome quality, but it was taken with the camera in my iPhone.) This was taken with the knitting on my lap and a lamp shining over my shoulder, giving the effect of uplighting. Now, I know it doesn’t exactly replicate Henry Freeman’s gansey the way I’d hoped, but it’s not half bad; and if the finished, blocked gansey looks anything like that I’ll be content, or as content as one can be in this fallen world.