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North Sea 8: 22 – 28 October

So here we are, the clocks have gone back and winter is suddenly standing at your elbow like a grinning lawyer who already knows you’ve been left out of the will. Whichever way the clocks go, back or forward, I always feel jet-lagged; even the extra hour in bed’s a swindle as I just end up lying awake wishing I was asleep. Bah. And possibly even humbug.

We had our first snow of the winter on Friday, great grey-black clouds sweeping down from the arctic dumping snow and sleet and icy rain on us. In some parts of Britain possessing a German army greatcoat and paratrooper boots might seem like an affectation—here it’s a survival tactic. (As the Russians say, there’s no such thing as cold weather, only the wrong clothing.)

Next up—Halloween, that ghastly festival where you glumly sit perched on the edge of your sofa, unable to relax, waiting for the scuffle of childish feet on the gravel closely followed by licensed extortion with menaces (this is probably how Terry Pratchett’s Thieves’ Guild started). I imagine that the experience of living through the Blitz, listening to the German rockets overhead and wondering if this time they’ll land on you, must have been uncannily similar.

As you can probably guess by now, I’m not really in a party mood. But what can you do? Short of dipping the mini-Mars bars in laxative chocolate or rigging up an anvil suspended over the porch from a fishing rod (also known as the Wile E Coyote Gambit), you just have to take your medicine. (Speaking of medicine, I did toy with the idea of rustling up some Harry Potter every-flavour beans, but it was just too much trouble getting the earwax. Maybe next year.)

[amazon_link asins=’B009UGK8E8′ template=’ProductAd’ store=’ganseyscom-20′ marketplace=’UK’ link_id=’c9c998b6-c88f-11e7-bc59-137fc9ea5efc’]As I mentioned last week, my third novel, The Wraiths of Elfael, is now launched on an unsuspecting world. I’ve been comparing my feelings to those of an anxious parent sending their not-especially-bright child off on their first day at school, expecting them to come back with a nosebleed and a black eye after being beaten up by the rough kids. But thinking it over I don’t think I need worry. Just one look at the cover tells you this is a book that can look after itself.

I’ve written a short piece about the origins of the story and some of the background—if you’re interested, you can find it here. It’s a winter’s tale, full of ice and snow and wolves and dark magic, the first part of a trilogy. It’s going to be free on Amazon from Monday through Wednesday, and will be joined on a free promotion on Wednesday by my other two novels, my contribution to the Halloween spirit. As ever, any promotion you can do to let people know it exists via Facebook or Twitter—and if you should happen to read it and enjoy it, an Amazon review—would be greatly appreciated.

When I can get my fingers warm enough to knit—mainly by breaking the chunks of ice off my knuckles with a toffee hammer—I keep knitting. As you will see from the pictures I’m now halfway through my third diamond. As expected, the zigzag and diamond combination won’t quite end in sync, so I’ll have to resort to one of the cunning stratagems I’ve been preparing.

Finally, Margaret’s been doing her usual magic with shawl-y type things (I’m a little vague, since it mostly seems to consist of knitting reproduction spiderwebs which then get stretched out to the size of fishing nets, the sort of fine work I imagine Galadriel tried her hand at when she wasn’t getting all fey and seeing the future in the bathroom sink). Anyway, we thought we’d share them here, and wish you all a very happy Halloween—and if you should happen to know where I can get an anvil and some fishing line at short notice…

North Sea 7: 15 – 21 October

Some parts of the world at this time of year enjoy an indian summer, a few weeks of warm, bright, summer-like weather. Caithness has just enjoyed an indian weekend—well, more of an indian Sunday, actually—in which the temperature soared to a giddy 12 degrees and the wind dropped to what was almost a gentle breeze. (Warm enough to shed at least one layer of thermal long johns—maybe even two.)

So we went to the castle of Old Wick, just a mile or so south of the town. You drive along the narrow clifftop road, but have to leave the car about 800 yards distant and walk the rest of the way across waterlogged fields (imagine the Dead Marshes in the Lord of the Rings, but instead of walking over the bodies of fallen warriors from bygone wars, here you have cowpats).

I’d seen pictures of the castle remains—just a ruined square tower, jutting up like a broken tooth, not very impressive—but I wasn’t prepared for the location. That part of the coast consists of a series of narrow inlets (or “goes” as they’re called up here, as in Whaligoe), and in between each is a narrow, sheer-sided promontory of rock jutting out into the ocean. Wick castle is perched on one of those promontories. (Lie your hand flat, palm-down on the table; now splay your fingers—the castle lies on your middle finger, and all the space from your first knuckle to the tip of your fingernail was taken up with buildings, a courtyard and a keep.) It’s really stunning.

It’s very old—one of the oldest in Scotland, dating back to the 1100s. Standing there, looking out over the limitless, empty ocean, waves breaking on the rocks far below like spouting whales, it’s hard not to imagine what it must have been like for the men and women who lived there on the edge of the world almost a thousand years ago. And I can’t help wondering how many men they lost in the early morning darkness as they stumbled out of bed and went to relieve themselves over the cliff edge—a fumble of clothing, a bleary misjudgement, a missed step and a long, fading, plummeting scream… (This, of course, is the reason indoor plumbing was invented.)

Another milestone on the gansey as I’ve finished the second diamond, and my zig, having zagged, is now starting to zig again (following the pattern as it moves up the body is a bit like watching a 1980s pingpong video game). I shall probably end up with four diamonds comprising my body pattern, but we’ll have to see. The pattern is starting to show up properly, now you can see the repeats. And it’s getting too tall to support its own weight, but quivers unsteadily like a fat man balancing on a chair to change a lightbulb.

Finally, a note to say that I’m publishing my third novel on Amazon kindle this week, the first part of my Welsh fantasy trilogy, The Wraiths of Elfael (which some of you may have already read when I offered it as a free download a year or so ago). It will retail for the exorbitant sum of 99 cents, but if you wait till next week it’ll be available on a free promotion from Amazon from 29-31 October.

It’s a snowbound, frozen chiller of a book set around Christmastime, which is why I thought I’d publish it now—except, of course, we’re enjoying this mild autumnal weather right now, which rather spoils the effect. So, if you do decide to read it, I suggest you take a bag of frozen peas from the freezer and stick it down the back of your neck to get you in the proper mood…

 

North Sea 6: 8 – 14 October

You know sometimes you feel like you shouldn’t have got out of bed? Well, I’m starting to think I shouldn’t get into bed in the first place. Thanks for the sympathy and suggestions over the pulled muscle in my neck last week. I was all set to write about how it was finally better now—but I had a relapse last night, so it’s back to sciatica of the neck. I have all the mobility of Batman in his body armour, and every movement is so slow it feels like the rest of the world is on time lapse.

It really wasn’t my weekend. How frustrating is this? Harper Collins, the publishers, having seen the success of Amazon’s kindle self-publishing boom, have just held an open call for unpublished fantasy manuscripts that they can publish as e-books. (It’s a bit of a cheat, really—you don’t get an advance, just royalties on copies sold, like Amazon, so in fact it’s basically self-publishing under the Harper Collins brand; but since you benefit from their marketing and promotion, it’s still definitely worth having a go.)

The window for submissions was advertised as being from the 1st to 14th October. So I’ve been beavering away, getting a couple of manuscripts ready, writing synopses, and “query letters”. Today—Sunday the 14th—I went to upload them, only to find that Harper Collins had closed the website at midnight on the 13th.

I can’t really complain—it was ambiguous, and anyway my teachers always told me that my habit of leaving everything to the last minute would come back to bite me—but all the same I can’t help feeling a shade dischuffed. (As the guy from Airplane almost said, looks like I picked the wrong year to give up chocolate!)

So it’s only going to be a short blog this week, partly because of all that wasted effort, and also because Margaret’s off on her travels again, to London and Edinburgh, and I have to figure out how to work the blog controls again. (Apologies for the ropey photos this week, too—it’s just me and my trusty iPhone, I’m afraid—and you’ll have to wait till Margaret’s back midweek before you’ll be able to click on the photos to enlarge them.)

I’m another couple of inches further on with the gansey. I know it looks like I’m knitting a “top hat cosy” (I should have gone into design, all these brilliant ideas), but you can see the pattern starting to emerge properly now. I had been concerned that the zigzag might disappear into the background, or be too thin, but it stands out quite distinctly. (Remember, this pattern section will only go as far up the body as the underarm gussets.)

Rainbow over Wick

At least I’ve found a way to knit which doesn’t involve too much discomfort in my neck, though it does involve a sort of slumped posture rather like the Hunchback of Notre Dame lining up a tricky shot at pool, or a crash test dummy. (And anyway, since I keep doing the damage yawning in my sleep I’ve decided I need more interesting dreams…)

North Sea 5: 1 – 7 October

I’ve always enjoyed the daft things sports reporters sometimes say live on air. My favourite from my childhood was someone commentating on an Olympic table tennis match on television who said, “It’s almost as if each player is challenging the other to hit the ball back over the net.” So imagine my delight when I caught the BBC radio commentary on the Japanese Grand Prix this morning, and the commentator said that the modern racing car steering wheel was covered with complicated technical buttons—”but the best drivers know what most of them do…”

I’ve needed cheering up this week, since I pulled a muscle in my neck on Wednesday night (I think yawning can now be classed as a martial art) and have been in quite a lot of pain ever since. When it was really bad I couldn’t lift my arms higher than my chest, which turned even simple operations like donning a pullover into an impression of a man with a dislocated shoulder trying to escape from a straightjacket. In order to put my cap on I had to wave it vaguely in the general direction of my neck, and then lower my head and sort of butt the cap like a goat trying to force its way through a hedge. If I was lucky the cap rested on top of my head as securely as the rowboat perches on the back of a surfacing whale in Moby Dick.

A stiff neck is of course the gift that keeps on giving since it provides endless mirth to one’s loved ones and colleagues, knowing as they do that it’s not really serious. (And if you were wondering, no, faced with a person whose head lolls like a puppet’s with the strings cut, tilting your head to the angle of the suffering person’s and giggling does not raise you to the level of wit achieved by such as Oscar Wilde—trust me on this…)

Which is one of the reasons why I haven’t made a lot of progress this week, since my standard knitting technique involves flapping my elbows like an overstimulated 12 year-old impersonating a headless chicken’s death sprint, and that’s quite tricky when you can’t move your arms much. (The other reason was a blood blister on the ball of my right thumb when, inspired by the spirit of Laurel and Hardy, I was putting together at work a display stand which had intersecting struts like tent poles to hold it up, and—you can see where this is going, can’t you?—I carelessly left my thumb in the exact spot where empty space would have been most useful; it got punched like a bus ticket.)

Still, I’ve got an inch or so of the gansey done, enough to finish a whole diamond and start to turn the zig into a zag. I rather like the wide panels on the body—they remind me happily of the big squares you get in really fancy white chocolate bars, the ones that need cardboard to stop them breaking. (Memo to self: chocolate ganseys. Mmmm.)

I’ve made a few mistakes as well, which Margaret has had to go back and fix for me—with my secondary cataract getting worse I’m operating on one and a half eyes most of the time now, and it’s the good eye that’s blurred. I think of it as knitting archaeology-cum-surgery, as she has to peel back the layers, go deep, and then perform complicated operations to the patient’s lower intestine. (Memo to self: haggis ganseys. Mmmyyeeuurrgghh.)

There’s another stunning gansey from Judit to share on the Gallery, a combination of traditional patterns blended to her own design. Congratulations again, and I think Henry Ford could have taken a few tips on productivity from her!

Finally, to return to the felicitous phrases of our friends in the media, I was watching the BBC news just before I wrote this. The newsreader solemnly announced that the provision of care for the homeless was—wait for it—a “postcode lottery”. The thought of which will keep me warm through the long winter nights to come…

North Sea 4: 24 – 30 September

OK, let’s start with the new title at the top of of the site. You see, when I started the blog all those years ago it didn’t seem worth giving it a fancy title–after all, it was just me wittering away into the ether, like the survivor of a post-nuclear apocalypse with a ham radio set, broadcasting from the ruins of a collapsed civilisation in the hopes of finding other survivors, but with little hope of ever getting an answer. (And with a pesky mutant problem, too.) And then, as more and more of us gradually came together, if not enough to rebuild civilisation then certainly enough for a cricket team (the two are really synonymous, of course), I was more or less stuck with “Ganseys.com” by default.

So why change it to “Gansey Nation”? Well, I like it because it describes what it feels like on this side of the keyboard, with so many people contributing and sharing their own projects—with the blog not just set to broadcast, but also to receive—that it genuinely feels to Margaret and me like a supportive interactive community. And with so many readers now we are, well, if not a nation (though we could kit out our navy in pretty snazzy jumpers if we were), certainly more than a cricket team.

Here, as promised, is the pattern chart for the body of the current gansey. It’s based on Hebridean patterns from Michael Green’s and Rae Compton’s books. Now, it seems to me that the body should be textured, with interesting patterns, but not so spectacular as to overshadow the yoke (which is going to be a different set of patterns and will, I hope, be appropriately spectacular).

So I have divided the body into seven panels on each side, front and back; and each panel is 25 stitches wide. The panels are divided by little 2-stitch cables, each flanked on either side with 2 purl stitches, cabling every sixth row. I’ve never done a cable narrower than 6 stitches before, and I really like the effect—they remind me of those thin stone columns in medieval Gothic cathedrals, arching up to heaven, and it makes me feel like I’m knitting a miniature cathedral in wool.

The panels alternate a zigzag with moss-stitch diamonds. The diamonds will probably in turn alternate closed and open diamond patterns as they ascend the body, separated by two rows of purl stitches, while the zigzag will wend its serpentine way alongside. (This way, if the wearer ever gets bored on long car journeys, she can amuse herself by playing snakes and ladders on the pattern.) Like other Hebridean ganseys, the body patterns will extend as far as the armpits/gussets, when there will be a central panel, probably of a trellis, topped by the yoke.

I’m still a little bemused by the garter stitch welt, which doesn’t behave itself nearly as well as the standard ribbing, but jumps up inappropriately like an over-excited puppy expecting a treat (“Down, Rascal!”). And there are times when it balloons out like a skirt, and it feels like I’m knitting a scale replica of a hovercraft. Still, no doubt it will all sort itself out once it’s been housetrained.

It’s been a wild week here in Caithness, gale force winds and driving rain (though today is gorgeous—blue skies, warm and no wind at all). We went for a scenic drive on Saturday to Dunnet beach, took a short cut and got lost (no road signs; where do they think this is, America?). The beach was deserted, wave after wave pounding the shore, spray whipped away by the wind. We went up to the viewing platform, but after ricocheting around like balls in a pinball machine for a minute decided enough was enough and retreated back to the car and amused ourselves watching unwary seagulls shooting backwards across the sky like clay pigeons.

So there we are. Welcome to Gansey Nation. I hope you like it. And remember, at least this is one nation that doesn’t require you to pay taxes…