I dare say you already know this, in which case feel free to skip down to a different paragraph (there’s some good stuff about arm seams later on), but did you know where JRR Tolkien got the name of Gandalf the wizard from?
I’ve been reading Tom Shippey’s fascinating “Master of Middle Earth”, about Tolkien and language and, given that Professor Shippey is also an expert philologist, he knows that of which he speaks. In it he quotes part of an Old Norse saga called the Dvergatal, or “tally of the dwarves”, with which Tolkien must have been very familiar. Part of this consists of a list of dwarf-names, and readers of The Hobbit will recognise many of them: Dainn, Bifur, Bafur, Nori, Oinn, Throinn, etc. Even the nickname “Oakenshield” (Eikinskjaldi) appears.
In the middle of the list is the name, “Gandalfr”. This seems to mean “wand” (gand) “elf” (alfr). Professor Shippey speculates that Tolkien must have looked at that name and wondered just what a “wand-elf” was, and what one was doing in the middle of a list of dwarves. A “wand-elf” could be another word for a wizard; and maybe he was with the dwarves because they were on a quest… And so The Hobbit was born.
I find this fascinating, because it reinforces the authenticity that underpins so much of Tolkien’s universe, and which no other fantasy writer can ever hope to emulate, but also because it offers an insight into the creative process. You can easily imagine Tolkien puzzling over what a wizard and a bunch of dwarves might have been up to, and ending up at the Lonely Mountain and the dragon asleep on his hoard. (Beowulf is another influence – a thief steals a cup from the dragon in that, too.)
Speaking of dwarves, Prof. Shippey also explains Tolkien’s spelling of that word. Modern English spells it “dwarfs”. But in English, ancient words ending in f (e.g., loaf, half) take the plural with a v (e.g., loaves, halves); therefore Tolkien reasoned that dwarf, being an equally ancient word, must have done so too originally. Hence his ceaseless battle with printers who kept “correcting” his spelling and changing it back to “dwarfs”!
Anyway, those of you asleep at the back can wake up now. I’ve finished the pattern panel on the other sleeve, and now it’s just the downhill freewheel to the cuff. I must admit, it’s quite a relief knowing that “knit two, purl two” won’t be any part of my life for the next little while.
One thing I forgot to mention last week was the border to the seam stitches. (The seam, as you know, is really just a purl stitch acting as a marker, or row divider, running down the middle of the sleeve.) I’ve been making a conscious effort to knit this gansey “properly” (whatever that means). So I’ve maintained the outer stitches of the gusset intact until the end, and decreased on the stitches immediately inside them to create a nice diamond-shaped border all round the edge. In the same way, I’ve left the stitches either side of the seam stitch intact, and have decreased on the stitches next to them. This also creates a nice border effect next to the seam, running down the arm.
Finally, this week’s bread is another French country bread with 15% wholemeal and rye flour, as a sandwich loaf. (Bake 10 minutes at high heat in the tin, then turn the heat down and take the loaf out of the tin for the rest of the baking time.) Makes good toast, too.
This week I have broken the all-comers gansey sleeve-finishing championships, by completing the first sleeve. That’s a whole sleeve in a fortnight, which is pretty good going for me. But that’s the advantage of plain knitting, you can just go with it.
The cuff itself is 6 inches long, rolled over to 3 inches, give or take – the advantage of this being, of course, that if the wearer has arms like a gibbon he or she can vary the length of the rollover to suit. The cast off row is in the same knit 2/purl 2 ribbing as the rest of the cuff to make for a snug fit round the wrist (even for gibbons, with their unique ball-and-socket wrist joints).
Actually, I’m amazed I’ve even got this far, since the highlight of last week was a 3-day migraine brought on, I suspect, by some Indian spices (turmeric, I’m looking at you – frequently from the inside of a toilet bowl). As is often the case these days, I get the flashing lights in my sleep, so that I wake up with the disturbing after-effects (headache, nausea, desire to watch daytime television), which certainly saves time. I’m trying to work out if I can out-source the entire experience to my dreams so I can lead a normal life, but so far life is fighting back.
I’ve been having fun hacking away at the novel I wrote a few years ago, and have reduced the verbiage from 135,000 to 123,000 words – and I’m only halfway through. It’s obvious I was suffering from Not Very Good Writer syndrome when I wrote it, since the characters are always talking grimly, excitedly, suddenly – when they’re not just shrugging – and on several occasions Basil Exposition drops in and makes sure the audience is keeping up with the plot. (It’s quite addictive, this editing lark. Take any novel off the shelves, open it at random and see how many unnecessary adverbs you can spot on a page – he urged pointedly. Or two characters are in dialogue, but the author keeps telling you their names, Gordon said…) My aim is now to reduce the novel to a 15-syllable haiku; it will be short, but by God it will be focused.
This week’s bread is another sourdough wholemeal loaf, 80% wholemeal to 20% plain flour. The next step is to create an exact scale replica of Stonehenge made out of these loaves, with a sacrificial dormouse tied to the slaughter stone, specially for the winter solstice. (OK, it’s a work in progress, but maybe if I can get an arts grant…)
A couple of months ago I received a letter from the hospital, saying that they were conducting a clinical trial into hypertension, and would I like to take part, on the grounds that my blood pressure was so high I should avoid cutting my finger in case I burst like a balloon popped with a pin. Well, I thought, at least I’d get a free medical out of it, and anyway my encounters with hospitals usually involve someone saying things like, “I’ve never seen one like this before” or “Are you sure it’s supposed to be that colour?”, so I thought this might be more fun.
Last week I duly toddled along and was met by a very nice nurse, and we got down to it. I signed various consent forms, told them where I’d like my ashes scattered (into the coffees of my late employers when they weren’t looking), stood on various scales, gave various coloured samples (chiefly red and yellow, since you ask), and after 45 minutes was having the home blood pressure testing kit demonstrated on me.
This was where events started to take a left turn. For it turned out that my blood pressure wasn’t high at all – it was bang in the middle of where it ought to be. The nurse decided on a “best out of 3” approach, which finally became a “best out of 9”, standing and sitting, before she finally admitted defeat. My blood pressure was too normal to allow me to take part in the trial. (I don’t know if you’ve ever had your blood pressure taken 9 times in a row on the same spot – it’s rather uncomfortable. Not unlike being gummed to death by an elderly manatee who’s lost his teeth and mistaken you for a clump of unusually tough algae, I should imagine.)
Finally, this weeks’ bread is a sourdough pain de campagne, 80% white flour blended with 10% each of wholemeal and rye. I forgot to put the trays in the oven to heat up first, so instead of rising from the bottom it rose from the top! I’m wondering if I can use this technique to bake edible bowling balls that come with the finger holes baked in…
It’s not often I compare myself to St Paul. But when he says, “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things,” then I think he’s describing my situation pretty closely. Not in all ways, of course – I mean, I still read Stephen King novels and laugh at the fart jokes in Family Guy – but certainly when it comes to picking up stitches round the neck and armhole, you just have to be grown up about it and get the job done.
The technique is laughably simple, and (for new readers) is described in some detail in the 
The armhole on this gansey is 8.5 inches per side, which at 9 stitches per inch equates to 76 stitches (or 152 stitches in the round). Because the armhole covers approximately 2 pattern bands on the yoke plus the ridge and furrow shoulder strap, I made sure I picked up about 33 stitches for each pattern band, leaving me 10 for the shoulder strap as far as the central cast-off ridge. Then the same again working down the other side. (This sort of spread is important to make sure you get an even distribution of stitches all round.) As usual, I decreased on the first row of the gusset, which coincided with the pick-up row, so that the row count for the gusset and the pattern will be in sync as I progress down the sleeve.
The neckline isn’t shaped, unlike most of the ganseys I knit. Instead, I divided for the neck a few rows earlier on the front than I did on the back, to give a marginally deeper neckline on the front. But the shape of the collar is a straight rectangle in the traditional style, with the traditional crinkly edge “clam” effect. The collar itself is in a conventional knit 2/purl 2 rib to a height of just under 1.5 inches.
Finally, this week’s bread, a basic ciabatta, the Italian slipper bread. The secret of ciabatta is a very moist, runny dough – it should really be kneaded by a machine (which I can’t afford right now), so I use a recipe that’s a little drier. It’s very easy to make, though, and has a crisp, crunchy, crackly crust and a soft, chewy crumb. This week’s tip: be very careful if you eat this bread with runny honey… Unless you plan on changing your shirt soon after.