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 Well, it’s back to normal, almost, after the travails of last weekend when our website was sucked into a very small black hole, localised in Miller Avenue in Wick. (I sometimes think Moses missed a trick with the plagues of Egypt; if he’d just threatened to take away Pharaoh’s website, instead of all that mucking about with locusts and frogs, the Children of Israel would have been on their way a damn’ sight sooner.)
Anyway, all we have to do now is reconstruct the handful of pages and comments we weren’t able to recover right away. In future, I think it may be safer to publish the blog as a hardback book each week.
 Margaret’s sister Gail and brother-in-law Bill from the States have been visiting. They brought with them unbelievable sunshine and fine weather (not sure how they got it through customs, but still) so that summer has not only arrived, it’s staked its tent down by the river and is sunbathing topless, the little minx; unfortunately they also seem to’ve smuggled in something from a chemical warfare laboratory, as first Margaret, then I, succumbed to Yankee colds.
As a result, I’ve spent much of the last few days in bed being haunted by tantalising visions of the sun, which hangs around just outside my window like the ghost of a lost love—so the rest of Wick may be deserted now for all I know, filled with unburied corpses of people less hardy than I, wiped out by Bill and Gail’s deadly virus. But I suspect not: somewhere in the distance I hear an ice cream van. (Damn! When will they offer proper home delivery?)
 Still, in my lucid moments—which are pretty rare, as you’ll have gathered—I have managed quite a bit of knitting and some writing. I’m preparing a collection of short stories for publication on kindle at Christmas, some of them inspired by Caithness, and as I want to expand the collection I have to write some more, which is fun. I’ve always enjoyed writing short stories, setting myself a challenge of so many thousand words, and then seeing how much story I can squeeze in before the sides burst.
As you will see from the photographs, I’ve finished the bottom half of the gussets and divided for front and back. Usually when I do a gusset, I start with the (purl) seam stitch; on the first row, I increase that by one knit stitch and increase an additional border purl stitch out of the adjacent body stitch, so that I then have purl-knit-purl. (After that I increase on every fourth row: the first time on either side of the centre knit stitch to give me 3 knit stitches; thereafter on the edge stitches to give me 5, 7, 9, etc.)
 Bass Rock from Barns Ness This time, I decided to let the purl seam run all the way through the centre of the gusset (so it can run unbroken from the welt to the cuff, always a neat effect). This meant I had to create my purl border stitches by increasing on the first row of the gusset (if you look at the photo taken from the reverse side you can see them more or less “floating” like little worm casts); and after that I just increased each half of each gusset by one knit stitch on every fourth row.
Finally, we’ve added another natty project from Judit to the gallery. It’s a small bag made using gansey patterns, big enough, she tells me, for a mobile phone and a set of keys. I hadn’t thought of using gansey patterns like that, being locked into the mentality of jumpers, but they’re really neat, aren’t they?
I meant to post these pictures last week—so apologies to Judit—but then our website got sucked into another dimension of time and space. I hope the people who live there find it useful—if we ever make contact with a gansey-wearing alien species, I may be to blame…
 First of all, apologies for the absence of the blog the last few days. As you’ll have gathered, we’ve had a major crash on the website—and while Margaret’s heroically managed to recover all but the last month’s blog posts we still don’t have any images for the rest of the site, and a few glitches remain. It’ll be a bit rough ‘n’ ready for the next week, so please bear with us. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.
Sorry for any inconvenience. Computers are wonderful things—it’s a miracle I’m talking to you now, really, when you think about it—but when they go wrong, boy do they go wrong. (The British comedian Eddie Izzard does a great routine about how you never see the crew of the Enterprise in Star Trek having to go Ctrl+Alt+Del to reboot their computer just when the Klingons are attacking, which would certainly happen in real life.)
 Anyway. Where was I? Oh, yes—the blog. Many thanks to everyone who downloaded a copy of my novel An Inquisition of Demons during the free promotion last week—just under 800, which isn’t bad at all—and for the positive reviews (3 on Amazon.co.uk, and Song’s on Amazon.com). I shall now slip back into well-merited obscurity until September, when the next one—the devastatingly brilliant The Bone Fire – comes out.
 In late-breaking gansey news, I’ve started the gussets, just over 14 inches up the body. As I said last week, I’m going to let the seam stitch run up the centre of each gusset—always a neat effect. Perhaps the best way to explain this is with a chart, so I’ll post one here shortly. As ever, the first few rows of a gusset look pretty ugly, but it soon settles down. (I hope!) I’m going to keep these gussets small, just over 3 inches.
 Not sure if there’ll be a blog next week; partly because the Queen’s Jubilee is coming up, so I have to practice saluting the flags that fly proudly over our home – a Union Flag, and the Reid family crest (a weasel couchant cringing under a double cross); but also because Margaret’s sister Gail, who sometimes posts here, and her husband Bill are over here for a visit.
We advised them to bring lots of warm clothes: as regular readers will know, the climate in Wick sometimes resembles the deck of a merchant vessel in heavy weather, lashed by wind and rain, and the only way to avoid being blown away on the way to the shops is to tie a line round your waist and put your trust in God. Well, wonderful to relate, the wind’s died down, the sun is out, the birds are making a bloody nuisance of themselves and it’s—well, it’s all rather gorgeous.
Without the cloud layer it’s as if the scaffolding’s been taken down and you get to see the finished edifice entire at last, the sky goes all the way up to the Ionosphere, and may not stop even there. You can go for a walk at eleven at night without a torch. All over Caithness people are emerging blinking into the sunlight like earthquake survivors, a little bit stunned, trying to reconnect themselves with their landscape, not quite able to believe they’re alive, inheritors of a suddenly silent, windless world.
 To quote the great PG Wodehouse, “It has been well said that an author who expects results from a first novel is in a position similar to that of a man who drops a rose petal down the Grand Canyon of Arizona and listens for the echo.”
Well, that’s my situation today. For I have (takes a deep breath, clears throat, shuffles feet nervously) just published my first novel on Amazon kindle.
The story is my “Wars of the Roses with demons” novel – part murder mystery, part fantasy, part historical novel, it falls between pretty much every stool you can imagine. It’s called An Inquisition of Demons, and it’s published under my own name, with a snazzy cover designed by Margaret. It normally retails for the shockingly good value of 99 cents, but right now – from Sunday till Thursday – it’s on a free promotion, so it can be downloaded it for nothing.
 Spring has arrived in Caithness Should you decide to give it a go – and quite frankly, it would be rude not to – and if you like it, I have just two requests to make: can you pass on the information to anyone you think might be interested – and can you give it a review on Amazon, please? You see, books by unknown authors need two things to get them started in life: firstly, lots of downloads (not a big surprise, really); and positive reviews. So the more reviews it gets, the better. Obviously, though, I’m not asking you to imperil your immortal soul by telling fibs; (coughs behind hand). Well, not much. A teeny bit, perhaps. Nothing your soul can’t handle, if you’ve lived a good life. (What’s that? Oh.)
As I plan to publish my other books on kindle over the next 2-3 years – the next one will come out in September – we’ve revamped the Ganseys.com website slightly. This is mostly so the book stuff doesn’t interfere with the gansey stuff (which is after all the main reason we’re all here). I’ve added a general section for my writing, and there’s a Q & A page dedicated to the background of this novel, for the curious.
Speaking of knitting, it’s been another week of steady progress. I’m over 13 inches up the body now, at the point where a young man’s thoughts turn to gussets (well, it is spring after all – it usually snows in spring, right?). Because of the way the pattern worked out, I’m thinking of letting the seam stitches run all the way through the centre of the gussets, if I can make it work. At present the hard part is knitting what feels like a collapsed bright red parachute, still with the parachutist inside.
Right. I’m off to check on my sales ranking (this morning I was the number 44,935 bestseller on kindle – the only way is, quite possibly, up!) – and listen out for that echo…
 It’s a bank holiday, it’s Margaret’s birthday, and outside the sun is shining brightly, lasering in through the windows like some alien death-ray and threatening to incinerate us like ants under a magnifying glass. And yet the last couple of days we’ve woken up to find the cars covered in snow. It’s all very confusing: the weather’s gone bipolar, when we want it to be bi-tropical. (Hey, here’s an idea for new children’s tv series helping to highlight the issues around depression – Brian the Bipolar Bear!)
I’ve been aware for some while now that I’m not seeing as well as I used to. You know the way the old Star Trek television series would go all soft focus whenever a pretty girl was on camera? It’s a bit like that, it’s as if my eyes have been fitted with a soft focus lens. (So that’s why all the local girls suddenly look so much more attractive! Well, that or the whisky.) It makes night driving difficult as oncoming headlights just become a distorted blur, and everything is slightly murky, like looking through cobwebs.
I’ve been expecting this. You see, sometimes after you have cataract surgery, a thin film grows over your new lenses. It’s easily fixed – you just pop down to the hospital and they zap it with a laser, clearing the lens. It’s quick and painless and only takes a few seconds (my Dad had it done). Unfortunately for me, I have to wait a while longer till the film has grown to a point where it’s worth firing up the laser. So it sounds like I have a fun few months in store (the optician said, “I’ll see you again in April”; yes, I thought, but I probably won’t see you…)
 Luckily I can still knit. You should be able to date progress on this gansey by counting the steps, like rings in a tree. I’m about a foot up the body now, and will probably start the gussets in a week or so. There’s not much to comment on a pattern like this, except to say that it’s going like a breeze, it’s delightfully tactile, it’s very red and I haven’t made any major mistakes (yet); and the Wendy yarn is definitely knitting up softer and bendier than the tighter Frangipani.
The prolific Judit from Finland has kindly allowed us to add another one of her splendid ganseys to the Gallery, here. As she says the tree of life represents the importance of the forests to the people of Finland, so I suggest you play a piece of music by the great Sibelius while you look at it – possibly the finale of his 5th symphony – to get you in the mood. (At least our snow melts!)
Finally, I’ve had an enquiry from Jeanette Baker looking for a traditional gansey pattern associated with Arbroath, just up the coast from Dundee. I’ve found mention in Gladys Thompson (p.109) to marriage lines from Arbroath, and Rae Compton (p.84) has a diagonal line, or bar. But I was wondering if anyone out there knew of any other references or patterns…?
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Well, it’s back to normal, almost, after the travails of last weekend when our website was sucked into a very small black hole, localised in Miller Avenue in Wick. (I sometimes think Moses missed a trick with the plagues of Egypt; if he’d just threatened to take away Pharaoh’s website, instead of all that mucking about with locusts and frogs, the Children of Israel would have been on their way a damn’ sight sooner.)
Margaret’s sister Gail and brother-in-law Bill from the States have been visiting. They brought with them unbelievable sunshine and fine weather (not sure how they got it through customs, but still) so that summer has not only arrived, it’s staked its tent down by the river and is sunbathing topless, the little minx; unfortunately they also seem to’ve smuggled in something from a chemical warfare laboratory, as first Margaret, then I, succumbed to Yankee colds.
Still, in my lucid moments—which are pretty rare, as you’ll have gathered—I have managed quite a bit of knitting and some writing. I’m preparing a collection of short stories for publication on kindle at Christmas, some of them inspired by Caithness, and as I want to expand the collection I have to write some more, which is fun. I’ve always enjoyed writing short stories, setting myself a challenge of so many thousand words, and then seeing how much story I can squeeze in before the sides burst.
