I’d like to dedicate this week’s blog to the memory of my uncle John, for whom I knit the “Balerno” gansey last year, who died this week. I never really got to know him well, but he always struck me as a kind, decent man, with a similar sense of humour to mine—a delight in wordplay and, let’s face it, excruciatingly bad jokes. He was a talented amateur artist, too, and we have a painting of his hanging up in our dining room which he gave us in return for the gansey.
I think as I get older there is a risk that this blog simply becomes my doctor’s medical notes—instead of going into the surgery, he can just log in to check my symptoms and prescribe medicine accordingly. This week it’s one blocked ear and one ear infection, which makes my head feel like I’m scuba diving through the Mariana Trench. So: antibiotic drops in one ear and olive oil in the other, and the sensation of worms crawling inside my ear canal en route to the brain to lay their eggs.
All of which would have been fine if I hadn’t also decided to bake bread this weekend. I didn’t fully realise my mistake until I started kneading—both hands thickly plastered up to the wrists in wet, sticky glutinous dough—and to my horror noticed that drops were trickling out of my right ear. I quickly discovered that tilting my head to the left, while solving that problem, merely created another, in that it started a leak from the other ear.
For a time I tried alternately tilting my head slowly back and forth, like a mime artist playing a sailor, or someone listening to an iPod with a dying battery, conscious that none of my recipe books, even the ones which encourage you to experiment and take risks, recommend ear medicine as a flavour enhancer to rustic bread. Then, fatally, my mind wandered, and I suddenly became aware of a cold, clammy, squirming sensation in my left ear. Yes, while my mind was busy elsewhere, my hand had inserted a dough-laden finger into my ear and—horribly—started wiggling it, like a soldier practicing how to kill an enemy with a bayonet.
So I now look forward to an interesting interview at the doctor’s next week when I get my ears syringed. (“Yes, there’s quite a lot of wax and—good God, what’s all this grey stuff encrusted in there? Porridge?”)
Right—retunes the dial to the knitting station. As you’ll see, I’ve finished the first sleeve. The double-length roll-back cuff is always a bit of a slog, as its six inches always takes longer to knit than I expect. I decreased down to 108 stitches, or 27 ribs of knit 2/ purl 2, and cast off in pattern as usual. So now I’ve got to grit my teeth, pick myself off up the canvas and the stitches around the armhole, and do the other sleeve. I made really good time on this one—I expect the next one to take rather longer.
Two splendid gallery contributions this week—first of all Sandra’s traditional Norfolk gansey, a very striking herringbone pattern, which looks like a perfect fit, too. And secondly, another couple of projects from Judit, who continues to put traditional gansey patterns to all sorts of innovative and versatile uses: a kantele cover (I had to ask what it was too!) and a cushion. Congratulations both!
Finally, a heads-up for those who usually wait till later in the week to read the blog, that I’m publishing my second novel The Bone Fire on Amazon for kindle next weekend. It’s not a sequel to Inquisition of Demons—I actually wrote it a year ago, and I’ve been revising it on and off since then. (You can read the blurb here if you’re curious.) I’m mentioning it now, not just to whip up a fever of excitement and expectation, though that would be nice, but because it will be on a free promotion from the 5th to the 7th August (along with Inquisition of Demons again). More details to follow next week!
On Saturday, after I’d been laid up sick and off work for a couple of days with a migraine of epic proportions, we decided what I needed was some fresh air—so we drove up to Duncansby Head, the most top-rightishly bit of Scotland, and one of our favourite wild places in Caithness.
I’ve mentioned Duncansby Head before—it’s an exposed headland surrounded by ocean, the Pentland Firth and the islands of Orkney and Stroma to the north, the Moray Firth to the south. Nothing much grows there, the wind’s too severe, a good strict Calvinist wind—any plants or trees just wilt and give up in the face of stern disapproval. (Maybe Calvinism explains why John o’ Groats is such a tawdry, joyless eyesore—it’s like a fun fair designed by people who know in their hearts that fun is sinful and wrong.)
Anyway, we went for a walk along the cliffs. Fresh air was in plentiful supply, all the way from the arctic circle, slamming into us at about 30 mph—we followed the countryside code and strapped sheep to our backs to use as flotation devices should we be blown over the edge—and persevered all the way up the cliff path to look down on the fabulous Duncansby Stacks and Thirle Door.
The cliffs and stacks are, of course, pretty cool (I like to think of them as ‘Satan’s Cufflinks’, and shall be using the name to any tourists I encounter in the hope that it catches on). But what made it really special was the seals—there must have been a whole pod or bob of them out fishing, their sleek black heads popping up and down in the grey waters like a giant whack-a-mole game, seabirds wheeling around them like flakes of snow; sometimes life ambushes you like this, throws you a surprise party when you least expect it.
The migraine was one of those ‘dysfunctionality’ migraines—no flashing lights or severe pain, but heavy congestion and utter prostration, so I’d get out of breath just standing up, coupled with a general feeling of weirdness, as if my eyes could see an extra dimension my brain couldn’t process. But I was able to knit on and off, and as a result got quite a lot done.
(And finally, Saturday evening’s entertainment at Wick Market Square – the massed bands of RBLS Wick, Thurso, and Caithness Junior Pipe Bands)
I’ve reached the cuff, and you can see that I decided to go with Lynne’s suggestion and knit the pattern all the way down the arm, leaving only the same inch of plain knitting as I did between the welt and the body (it’s such a great pattern I wanted to continue it; and besides, there’s something very fetching about cables running all the way down the arm). Now all I have to do is decrease, and knit the six inches of ribbing for the fold-back cuff.
By the way, after my concern over balls of yarn, I’m just coming to the end of ball ten. I’ll have to break open another ball somewhere down the cuff, but I’ll still have the best of a whole 100g ball left out of the thirteen I bought. (I still intend that the last gansey I shall knit before I retire will consist of all the leftovers in my stash—and it will give everyone else a pretty good idea of what a migraine looks like…)
So, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the classic sci-fi movie 2001: A Space Odyssey? It opens with “the dawn of man”, in which a bunch of proto-humans encounter a black monolith that messes with their heads and allegedly increases their intelligence (though given that humanity today spends most of its time watching reality tv, you’ve got to wonder if the aliens were really up to the job).
Anyway, the point is, when the ape-like humans see the monolith they rear up on their legs and wave their hands frantically above their heads, gibbering and screeching in panic. So you will imagine our surprise, while strolling through Dunnet forest this weekend, to see a bunch of people apparently recreating this iconic scene, leaping around, their hands in the air like some old-time Shaker revival. Were they actors? Was this primal therapy? Or is this where librarians come to let off steam, cracking under the strain of constantly telling people to be quiet?
Heron on Wick River
Turned out it was none of these. They were all dog walkers, and the forest was infested with swarms of fat black flies, thick as a disturbed hive of bees. Soon they were all over us, too – burrowing in our ears, up our nostrils, landing on any patch of unprotected skin; if you foolishly opened your mouth you’d be spitting out flies for a week. In the end we had to retreat back to the car, passing at least one glinting ivory skeleton that had been picked clean to the bone. (And there was me thinking those objects dotted around the forest were folk art – I now realise they are Memorials to the Fallen.)
I am now about eight inches down the first sleeve of the gansey, and as I started the sleeve on a new ball of wool, you can see exactly how much 100g gives me. I originally ordered thirteen 100g balls of yarn, and have exactly 4 (and a little bit) left – in other words, there was enough for 2-and-a-half balls for each sleeve. Should be OK, though I must admit I was a bit anxious for a time, there.
My last decision point is coming up. You see, in the original photo of this gansey in Gladys Thompson the pattern ends just below the elbow, leaving the forearms mostly plain. I like this effect very much, but I also rather like the ‘full body armour’ effect of letting the pattern run all the way down to the cuff. So I have to decide which to go for – or whether to compromise, and go for something halfway between the two? Decisions, decisions.
Celebration time. I’ve completed (hurrah!) the last of the short stories for a collection of fantasy tales I’m hoping to publish on Amazon kindle in December, and Margaret is putting the finishing touches to the cover for The Bone Fire, my second novel, which will be published on Amazon in August (the central image of the book was inspired by a dream I had – no, not one of those dreams, though I’d probably sell more copies if it had been…). Anyway, I’ll be putting up a page on the site saying more about The Bone Fire next week.
Meanwhile, if anyone knows where I can get hold of a cheap, second-hand beekeeper’s veil and helmet – no, better go for the full Neil Armstrong astronaut rig – I may even consider going for another walk in the woods sometime…
Ganseys, as you may have noticed, take quite a bit of knitting; I’m already four months into this one. Still, that’s the neck and shoulders done—there’s just the sleeves to go. Reaching this part of a gansey is tremendously liberating; suddenly it all feels so much easier, the knitting equivalent of coasting downhill on a bicycle with your hands behind your head and your feet on the handlebars, after slogging up the other side in first gear.
I mentioned in the comments last week my faux pas about the ribbing on the neck. I’m still not exactly sure (a) how you can even screw up something as straightforward as knit 2, purl 2, and then (b) not notice for eight rows—but, reader, somehow I managed it. So I gritted my teeth and tugged out the needles and ripped it all back to the pick-up row, and did it over again (12 rows, or an inch plus cast off), which felt like doing lines after school.
Next came the sleeve, and picking up the stitches. The armhole is nine inches deep, including the shoulder strap; my standard stitch gauge is 9.25 stitches to the inch; so 9 x 9.25 = 83 stitches per side, or 166 in all. By a very happy coincidence, this is exactly the right number of stitches to fit my step and cable pattern without having to fiddle it to make it fit. (Such was my euphoria that, had I lived in ancient Athens, I might have jumped out of the bath and run down the street without a towel shouting ‘Eureka!’; however, since this was Caithness, where the icy wind has a tendency to nip any unprotected dangly bits rather sharply, on this occasion I forbore.)
She’s back, baby
Margaret’s back from her stay in La-Chic-sur-Mer, or wherever she was in France, and now she’s lounging around elegantly smoking gauloises and correcting my pronunciation of ‘croissants’ (which rather resembles a bulldog sneezing in mid-bark). She’s also brought her camera back, which means a return to blog photos that are actually in focus, thank goodness.
As you’ll see, I’ve decided to follow the original design and make the sleeves the same pattern as the body; I want to continue the pattern down the sleeve to at least the forearm, which I think gives it a certain integrity. I’m coming to really appreciate the tight cable combined with the chunky, three-dimensional texture of the steps (which, I now realise, remind me disconcertingly of a Yorkie bar, a worrying sign for someone who’s given up chocolate – if this gansey was brown my needles would probably be slick with drool and my tongue unpleasantly furry).
Finally I’m indebted to Song of this parish for bringing this to my attention: a Cornish woman who finally finished her husband’s gansey after thirty years (see http://www.thisiscornwall.co.uk/Brenda-casts-30-years/story-16469270-detail/story.html) (Oct 2018: link now gone – Ed.).
Suddenly my six-month turnaround doesn’t seem so bad after all…
It’s week two of Margaret’s absence, and so far things are holding up pretty well. I haven’t reverted to savagery yet, and have even figured out how to make fire by rubbing two of the neighbour’s children together.
(Idea for a story: a bunch of dyslexic satan-worshipping archivists get stranded on a desert island and revert to savagery—working title—“Lord of the Files”… Thank you, I’m here all week, try the nut cutlets.)
I have also, as you will see from the pictures, finished the shoulders of the gansey—12 rows of “rig ’n fur” pattern on each side, joined and cast off using the standard 3-needle bind-off technique.
The curved neckline on the front is achieved as follows. I wanted my neckline to be indented by 2 inches, which is 24 rows at my stitch gauge. So, I started the neck 24 rows from the beginning of the shoulder rig ’n fur. I divided the total number of stitches across the front of the gansey by 3 (216 stitches / 3 = 72: 72 for the left shoulder, 72 for the neck and—are you paying attention at the back?—72 for the right shoulder). Then, I slipped 12 stitches from each side of the neck onto each shoulder needle; and, as I worked my way up, I decreased them at a rate of one stitch every 2 rows over the 24 rows (or 2 inches).
Now, this might leave you with the misleading impression that I know what I’m doing…. Yeah. Let me stop you right there.
You know when you finish a shoulder you have a little rat’s tail of yarn left dangling, to be darned in at the very end? Well, when I went to cast off the left shoulder (you can see where this is going, can’t you?) instead of using the new ball of yarn I’d prepared specially … I absent-mindedly used the rat’s tail, and even got two inches cast off before I realised what I was doing and had to unpick the lot, stitches pinging off the needles like a fat man’s waistcoat buttons.
Dead dog or cleaner’s coat?
All of which would just result in just a wry chuckle and an amusing anecdote for the grandchildren on long winters’ evenings, if I hadn’t done the exact same bloody thing on the other shoulder too. I don’t suppose you remember a song from 1978 called ‘Jilted John’ by, er, Jilted John? (You can look it up on YouTube if you’re curious.) At one point the band all join in the catchy refrain, “Gordon is a moron”—and, you know, there are times when I rather think they’ve got a point.
Funny how things stay with you. I was 18 when the song came out, and had to live with it all through university; someone thoughtfully gave me a badge. Even now old friends occasionally remind me of it, and we laugh for old times’ sake, and smile a little sadly for the passing of our youth, and wonder what became of the people we were all those years ago, and then late at night I sneak out and let all the air out of their tyres. (You know, I have an idea that when I die and stand before the throne of judgement, a chorus of sniggering angels will be pointing their fingers at me and singing that exact same chorus.)
View from Duncansby Head
I have a friend who, like me, has spent many years having his novels rejected by the publishing industry, and who decided to self-publish for kindle last year. He writes under the name of D.M. Mitchell, and—proving that the publishing industry couldn’t recognise talent if it burst out of a birthday cake and danced naked in front of them—not that I’ve tried this—maybe I should? (looks in mirror; common sense prevails)—he’s been as successful as he always deserved to be, with over 80,000 downloads. Anyway, he tells me he’s putting at least one of his books, “Max”, on a special free promotion sometime round about the 4th July; so if you have a kindle, and feel like reading something different, I can recommend it.
Finally, here are the statistics for this website for the month of June: 158,231 hits, resulting from 16,903 separate visits. Isn’t that incredible? The Gansey Nation will soon get recognition from the UN at this rate, and before you know it we’ll be threatened with sanctions if we don’t hold democratic elections.
So, thanks to everyone for all your support; see you next week—when Margaret will be back (hurrah). I’m off to listen to some music—doesn’t matter what—anything to drive that blasted song out of my head…
I’d like to dedicate this week’s blog to the memory of my uncle John, for whom I knit the “Balerno” gansey last year, who died this week. I never really got to know him well, but he always struck me as a kind, decent man, with a similar sense of humour to mine—a delight in wordplay and, let’s face it, excruciatingly bad jokes. He was a talented amateur artist, too, and we have a painting of his hanging up in our dining room which he gave us in return for the gansey.
All of which would have been fine if I hadn’t also decided to bake bread this weekend. I didn’t fully realise my mistake until I started kneading—both hands thickly plastered up to the wrists in wet, sticky glutinous dough—and to my horror noticed that drops were trickling out of my right ear. I quickly discovered that tilting my head to the left, while solving that problem, merely created another, in that it started a leak from the other ear.
For a time I tried alternately tilting my head slowly back and forth, like a mime artist playing a sailor, or someone listening to an iPod with a dying battery, conscious that none of my recipe books, even the ones which encourage you to experiment and take risks, recommend ear medicine as a flavour enhancer to rustic bread. Then, fatally, my mind wandered, and I suddenly became aware of a cold, clammy, squirming sensation in my left ear. Yes, while my mind was busy elsewhere, my hand had inserted a dough-laden finger into my ear and—horribly—started wiggling it, like a soldier practicing how to kill an enemy with a bayonet.
Right—retunes the dial to the knitting station. As you’ll see, I’ve finished the first sleeve. The double-length roll-back cuff is always a bit of a slog, as its six inches always takes longer to knit than I expect. I decreased down to 108 stitches, or 27 ribs of knit 2/ purl 2, and cast off in pattern as usual. So now I’ve got to grit my teeth, pick myself off up the canvas and the stitches around the armhole, and do the other sleeve. I made really good time on this one—I expect the next one to take rather longer.
It’s week two of Margaret’s absence, and so far things are holding up pretty well. I haven’t reverted to savagery yet, and have even figured out how to make fire by rubbing two of the neighbour’s children together.
