Gansey Nation

So here we are, after a couple of weeks off, back to the fray: it’s time for a new project. You probably can’t tell from the photographs, but this one’s a bit, ah, vivid. You see, I decided to postpone my intricate Caithness-based cream gansey project to next winter, as I can see light-coloured yarn better than darker colours in the black winter evenings. Instead, I’m knitting a gansey for a friend who works in Edinburgh – he rashly requested one in “fireman red” – so that’s what he’s getting.

I’m more of a muted, natural colours sort of guy, myself (or as some would have it, bearing in mind that 80% of my wardrobe explores the rich, exotic palette of grey, “drab”); so all this comes as something of a shock. I keep looking down and thinking I’ve set myself on fire, or I’m haemorrhaging badly. Several tropical birds have smashed into the lounge window thinking they’ve spotted a mate.

North shore towards Pulteneytown

After some of the more complicated patterns I’ve done recently I have the need to do something simpler (i.e., one I don’t have to think about too much). So I’m doing a Filey pattern from Gladys Thompson’s book, one I’ve always really liked. By a happy coincidence, my friend is the same size as my last victim (the pullover has a 46-inch chest), so once again I’ve cast on 388 stitches for the ribbing, and away we go.

In other news, you know that scene at the end of The Empire Strikes Back? The one where Luke’s got a new hand to replace the one Darth Vader sliced off – and a robot tests it by prodding it with a needle and all his fingers twitch? I’ve never been able to watch that without flinching, but last week I found myself in a very similar situation (the needle thing, not the father slicing off the hand thing, in case you were wondering).

I’ve got a long-standing problem with my forearms: I can’t lift heavy weights for long; I get shooting pains and my hands lose the ability to grip. I’ve been able to ignore it up till now because I haven’t had to carry stuff about much. But now I’m serving in the frontline infantry, 3rd Battalion, Queen’s Heavy Archives, it’s a bit inconvenient.

So we tripped the 100 miles down to Inverness last week so I could have electric pulses zapped into me. In short, they attach electrodes to your elbows and wrists, and slide wire loops over your thumbs and a couple of fingers; and then the doctor says, “Igor, the switch,” and throws his head back and cackles maniacally while you watch your hand flopping around on the table like a landed fish, totally out of your control. The pulses come as regularly as a disapproving knitting teacher clicking her tongue, and they’re happening inside your body, there’s nothing you can do, except watch your fingers twitch like a frog’s leg in science class.

St Fergus' Church

Anyway, I learned two important things. Firstly, I don’t have carpal tunnel or a trapped nerve (but maybe tendonitis); and second, if I’m ever arrested by the secret police I should just sign anything they put in front of me because I have as much resistance as a meringue helmet.

By the way, I said last week that the Caithness dial was set to gloom. Well, that all changed last week – the whole of Britain’s been basking in glorious sunshine. God’s adjusted his set, and turned up the contrast: so the river and sea, which since we moved up here has been a steely grey-green, has suddenly turned deep blue. Coats and scarfs are discarded, and knees tentatively exposed (looking pale and unhealthy, like skin that’s been covered by a cast); the clouds have parted like a theatre curtain, to reveal a whole bigger sky behind the one we’re used to. I’m developing a squint.

And suddenly a fireman-red gansey doesn’t look so out of place after all…

… And we’re back: Margaret from her jaunt with some happy memories and a cold, and I from my break with – at last – a completed gansey. It’s still to be blocked, but the cuffs are finished and all the ends are darned in and snipped off. So all we have to do now is wash it and pin it out, and hopefully next week you’ll be able to see the pattern in its natural habitat. It might even be the right size; always a bonus.

Turned out, this was a surprisingly fiddly jumper to knit: partly because of the moss stitch running the length of the body, partly because I made the classic blunder for someone with my eyesight of knitting a dark yarn in the winter months without adequate lighting; and partly because the various pattern segments don’t have regular, uniform repeats – so each bit of the pattern repeats on a different row, which means you have to concentrate. (And concentration, as we know, really isn’t my strong suit…)

But the pattern is so effective, and distinctive with its stars and especially the “hanging diamonds” (or bunches of grapes or bats) under the yoke, that I’m glad I chose it. And somehow, like Patrington and Withernsea, I shall now always now think of it in conifer green.

Otherwise, the highlight over the last couple of weeks was a business visit to the archives of Dounreay nuclear power facility, perched on the north coast crags of Caithness. You’re not allowed to take photographs, but basically the circular main reactor rises out of the flat terrain like an orange on a bookshelf.

There’s more security than getting on a plane (they have their own armed police force), and once through the gates you can’t be left unattended. They unsettle you brilliantly at reception, too, by playing a video about what do to in case of emergency (though it didn’t involve losing your head and screaming like a baby, which is probably what I’d end up doing).

I don’t know what I’d imagined – my only ideas of nuclear facilities were mostly based on James Bond films, which I appreciate may not be entirely accurate. It was a bit more lived-in than the usual Bond bad guy HQ, which always look brand new, as if they’ve just been assembled from an Ikea “supervillain lair” flatpack; but then Dounreay is older, and is in the process of being decommissioned. I used to live near a brewery in Northampton, and on the whole the site was broadly similar, with lots of large steel tanks and pipes and men in hard hats and dark glasses with machine guns (just like growing up in Northampton, in fact). All in all, it came over as a very professional, very calm, very competent – exactly what you’d hope for, in fact.

They have a small museum, and I got to handle one of the old fuel rods. In the movies these always seem to be the size of Nelson’s Column, immersed in a tank of sinister bubbling liquid. This was about the size of a rolled-up umbrella. Another illusion shattered.

The archive is expertly managed, and consists of thousands of boxes of files and papers in several strongrooms, all under heavy security. The records have to last at least as long as the nuclear material, and there’s an interesting question here about how you keep records for thousands of years. Modern paper is too highly acidic to last – just leave a newspaper on a windowsill – and electronic records change so fast they’re obsolete in no time (where do you insert an old floppy disc in a modern pc?).

Fortunately, I can leave these problems to older and wiser heads, while I revel in the luxury of no knitting deadlines and start to plan the next gansey. Something Scottish, I think. And definitely in a lighter yarn, like cream; i.e., a colour where I can actually see the pattern. I’ve been told that the Caithness summers are dazzlingly bright, but for now the dial is still set on “gloom” and I’m not taking any chances…