At times like this, when we divide front and back and dedicate ourselves to progressing with the yoke, it is comforting to think of the words of Our Lord when he said, “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew, 11:30).
Mind you, he may have had one of those simple repeating patterns in mind, like Henry Freeman of Whitby, and not one of these fiddly Scottish fleet yokes, such as I am embarked on here. Verily I say unto you, “For my yoke is sort of complicated, and my burden is a pain in the posterior” (Gordon, 16:29pm).
For this gansey we have divided the yoke into 6 panels, each separated by a cable (6 stitches across, flanked with 2 purl stitches either side, and cabling every 6th row to keep the maths simple). The centre of the yoke is marked with a double cable, one either side of the central steek on the front here. (On the back, of course, these will just sit side by side, separated by 2 purl stitches.)
Each panel is 25 stitches across. The pattern repeats on the panels are all 32 rows high, and each will be separated by a 4-row horizontal strip (1 row knit, 2 rows purl, 1 row knit). There will be 3 pattern repeats, and 2 horizontal strips, for the height of the yoke. (In other words, the yoke will be about 104 rows, or just over 8 inches, and will fit 3 trees or equivalent.)
As you will see from the photographs, we have opted for 3 patterns for the yoke, chosen to contrast (to an extent) with the pattern on the body, which was very busy; these are plainer and larger. The triple cross-bar comes from Thompson, p.99; the double diamond comes from Pearson, p.64, and the tree of life from Pearson, p.80. (All adapted to fit the width of the yoke minus cables.) All are from Scotland, if not necessarily from Fife – but it’s close enough for jazz, as the saying goes. (The shoulder straps, when I get to them, will consist of the same chevrons as appears in the centre panel.)
In other news, I celebrated the completion of the rough first draft of my novel at the weekend – consisting of 78,000 words. I’ve got to rewrite it now, and edit it ruthlessly into shape (down to c.70,000). I’ve set myself the target of achieving a completed first draft by the end of March – though of course it won’t be finished even then. As it stands it’s pretty terrible – but even so, I can see a halfway decent novel buried inside, like the thin handsome person I know is in there when I look in the mirror…
On the rare occasions I raise my head from the keyboard, I notice that spring seems finally to have arrived, crashing into Edinburgh like a dawn raid by the police, kicking in the door and letting in the light. As the song says, it’s been a long, cold, lonely winter. I’m declaring this officially the start of the New Year – 2011 starts here.
Meanwhile, to quote the medieval monk whose poem Carl Orff set in Carmina Burana (the track is In Trutina, and it’s just beautiful): ad iugum tamen suave transeo (“to the sweet yoke, however, I submit myself”)…
So it was back to the hospital for my final check-up after the septoplasty operation last week. The consultant took a device like the thing for removing staples from paper and twisted each nostril so he could peer up it with a torch (“and what did you do at work today, dear?”). Then as a special treat he took a fibre optic camera on a wire and fed it up each nostril so he could show me the results on a television screen.
In fact, after bouncing it off the underside of my skull once or twice to prove the point, the consultant withdrew the camera and declared that I had a “beautiful nose”. (I told him that nobody had ever said that to me before; but reminded him all the same that I was happily married, just to be on the safe side.) So now, he said, all I have to do is wait for the congestion and migraines to stop – somewhere around the end of autumn, he thought – and I’d start to feel the benefit…
I have finished the centre panel on the gansey cardigan, and I’m all chevroned out for now. I’ve never been too sure about chevrons, only having seen photos, and these may be the first ones I’ve knitted like this. But this came out rather well, especially when the light catches it just so. I’ll have to wait till I’ve done the yoke to see how it all pans out, but so far so good. (It was easy to knit, as well – once you get into the groove a pattern of “purl-knit-knit–knit” is rather soothing, like telling rosary beads.) I’m almost to the end of my first 500g cone of Frangipani yarn, too, so that gives you an idea of how much yarn this is going to take.
Deep in my basement laboratory machinery has hummed, electrodes have crackled, eerie blue light has flickered under the door, dials have, er, dialled, and in short, I emerge with a manic stare and a wild cry of triumph*, while on the table my creation twitches with galvanic life.
I’m well into the gussets, too, working on my default increase of 2 stitches (one either side of the gusset) every 4 rows. As ever, it looks laughably amateurish and uneven for the first few rows, then gradually resolves itself into a nice, orderly shape. (I’m adopting the totally unnecessary style whereby I don’t actually increase on the edge stitches, but on the stitches next to the edges on the inside. This gives a nice clean un-distorted stitch on either edge, which makes for a clear border.)
So what is my new invention? As hinted last week, I have created a new bread product which will make my name a hissing and a byword among weight watchers everywhere. I call it the “Chip-batta”, which is a bad pun, i.e., a cross between a ciabatta and a British “chip butty” (basically, a thick sandwich, traditionally on white bread, whose filling is the large, soggy French fries we call chips). At a stroke, it’s the ultimate comfort food (stroke being the operative word, I suspect, alas).
Yesterday I thought it was probably time to check on my progress, and come to some decisions about how long Margaret’s cardigan is going to be, since if I wasn’t careful I’d end up knitting not so much a gansey as a cocoon. Imagine my surprise when I discovered – not that I wish to fall into the stereotype of a heedless typical male, you understand – that she isn’t in fact quite as tall as I thought, and that unless I changed course soon she’d have very warm knees but rather restricted mobility.
After some complicated calculations involving a tape measure, a slide rule and an abacus, we agreed on a total length for this gansey of 23 inches, from the top of the shoulder to the bottom of the welt. Given that I’ve already knitted 11.5 inches, and that my usual gusset-plus-yoke combinations come to about 12 inches, clearly it’s time to hastily change gear, start the gusset, stop knitting the body pattern and switch to the central band. (If you open the window and listen carefully that sound you hear will be me frantically crashing the gears of my knitting brain.)
If I sound tired, it’s because I am. Not only because of the usual insomnia, migraines, etc. – that gets boring after a while – but because I have today reached 60,000 words on the novel I’m writing. (The tragedy, alas, is that nearly all of them are the wrong words, and it will have to be substantially rewritten once I get to the end, but just at the moment I’m aiming for quantity, not quality!). I’m still rather pleased to have got there in just 3 months – 2 of which were spent writing, the other lying in bed thinking the sort of thoughts that made Thomas Hardy such a riot at parties.
My recent experiments combining mashed potatoes and bread led me back, inevitably, to the fons et origo of my inspiration, my father’s celebrated traditional Scottish “tattie” (potato) scones. (See last week’s comments for recipe.)