I’ve been playing around with Maori designs this week, with a view to incorporating them into a gansey design. The key challenges so far are twofold: to represent curvy swirls and waves in a style that probably works best with straight edges and linear geometric patterns; and to achieve by means of contrast a monochrome representation of vibrant colours.
I had the advantage that I already knew the overall effect I was looking for – i.e., what sort of patterns to use, and where they should go. So it wasn’t a question of looking for inspiration; rather, I was looking for patterns to fit my conception of what the pullover should look like, which made things easier.
One of the advantages of a 3-stage gansey (body, centre panel and yoke) is that I can get started with the body patterns and leave the others till later: I don’t have to plan it all out in detail from the start. So I’ve been playing around with a few of these possible body patterns on graph paper, some of which are in fact quite close to the traditional gansey diamond patterns of the north-east, such as Flamborough. This also means I can get my eye in with something semi-familiar, before tackling the complicated stuff like circles and yarn-overs.
Next week I’ll post some of these graph-paper patterns. (I can’t do that this week as Margaret’s gone off on her annual jaunt to France on a polymer clay jewellery course, and as usual she’s booby-trapped her room and the computer like something out of Home Alone – any attempt to access it and I will end up dangling helpless from the ceiling in a net. Which goes some way to explaining why you’ll need a magnifying glass to read this, as I’m damned if I can discover how to increase the font size. Sorry.) I may even try my hand at a swatch, though I promise nothing – it’s hard to visualise what the patterns will look like in three dimensions.
But on the whole, it’s rather nice not having a project started yet. There’s something about having a gansey you haven’t started that’s like knowing term starts in a week and all your essays will be due, but meanwhile there’s still time to laze around in your underwear and watch daytime TV… Still haven’t decided what to do with the last gansey, by the way – it’s sitting folded up on a box in my study, like a sulky teenager waiting to find out its punishment. For now, it can wait.
In the meantime, having finished the Pickwick Papers I’ve been reading Terry Pratchett’s Jingo. Here’s my favourite exchange so far:
‘Tell me, sergeant, are you of a nautical persuasion?’
Colon saluted again. ‘Nossir! Happily married man, sir!’
‘I meant, have you ploughed the ocean waves at all?’
Colon gave him a cunning look.
‘Ah, you can’t catch me with that one, sir,’ he said. ‘Everyone knows the horses sink.’
So there we are. Despite spending more than half of the last week in bed, knocked out by this blasted cold which is proving rather stubborn to shift, I was still able to remain upright long enough to finish the gansey, like a wounded gunfighter in a spaghetti western who raises himself up off the floor long enough to take down his opponent before collapsing himself in a blaze of Ennio Morricone.
But then there’s the pattern, which doesn’t quite work and, to be fair, never did really. (Though to be fair some of the pictures do show it resembling Henry Freeman’s pattern, so not a total failure.) Is it therefore worth the trouble to spend 2-3 months reworking the sleeves? And then there’s the fit – I’m not saying it’s tight across the midriff, but I think I can see a new market opening up for ganseys that act as corsets. When I put it on my thighs get bigger to accommodate parts of my lower intestine. (Oh, I just had a disturbing thought – maybe those pictures of knitted fishermen’s socks and drawers aren’t working wear after all, but are – the horror – fishermen’s lingerie? I think Victoria’s Secret could be missing a trick here…)
So I’m seriously tempted to just rip the whole thing out and file it under experience – after all, it served its purpose and kept me occupied while I moved up here to Edinburgh, with all the stresses and strains that that entailed, so I’m really not complaining. I could always delete the last 6 months’ worth of blogs and then pretend the cat ate it; the only problem being, our cat would never be able to keep it down, and in any case, I dare say ganseys are meant to be worn externally. (I toyed with turning it into a cat blanket, now winter is approaching, but it’s so heavy, and our cat is so old, I don’t think she’d have the strength to escape once she was placed inside it.)
This week’s question: does echinacea work? This week’s answer – given that I’ve just spent the best part of 2 days in bed knocked out with a wretched cold, with power to add – is a resounding “no”. This week’s blog is therefore brought to you by the purveyors of quality paracetamol and codeine, aka “real drugs”.
Where was I? Oh yes, the gansey. I’ve been researching Maori patterns extensively, which is a euphemism for a quick Google image search, which, taken with the designs on my old wooden ruler from I brought with me from New Zealand 150 years ago, has given me something to work on. The next step will be to buy some graph paper, maybe a pencil and then get down to it. I think most of the patterns I end up with will require a fair bit of amendment, as (as others have observed) Maori patterns are usually strongly coloured and starkly contrasted. Whereas mine will all be in white. So there’s a challenge there from the start.
It’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon… No, hang on a second, make that a quiet week in Dublin Street in Edinburgh, where the children are fair-haired with screams that could cut through tin, and the adults are sodden and huddled under umbrellas.
So why has nothing much happened this week? Well, first of all, we’ve had a friend to stay, my old friend Vincent, and sitting around listening to music while putting the archive world to rights kind of doesn’t leave a lot of room for knitting. Second, I’ve been put on different blood pressure pills, and have a whole new set of side effects to get used to, not to mention the general disorientation that comes with having your blood pressure altered. (Imagine the taking-the-lift-to-the-seventeenth-floor sensation when the plane is banking steeply, then dipping just before it comes in to land, and that’s what it’s been like. Though without the in-flight meal, so in fairness it’s not all bad.)
We went to see a stirring performance of Wagner’s first great opera, the Flying Dutchman, as part of the Festival, during which Margaret – and this is very important – did not fall asleep. And we went to see the closing fireworks display last night, which was spectacular, but somehow not quite as spectacular as I’d hoped. Maybe we were just in the wrong place, but I went hoping to have my heart ravished by noise and light, and instead it just underwent a mild flirtation, and didn’t leave its number.
