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 As promised, here are some photos of the finished heather gansey based on the pattern worn by Stephen Hawker, the quondam vicar of Morwenstow in Cornwall. (I was unable to recreate the pose from the rev’s celebrated photograph, as every time I stood outside a church and stretched out my arm a parishioner would appear, look pitying on me, press a shilling into my palm, call me his good man and tell me not to spend it all on drink.)
 A Taste of Things to Come I hope you had a happy Christmas, and that Santa was kind. Alas for me my cold developed rapidly, so that I spent quite a bit of the festive period in bed with my brain taking the sensible decision to go somewhere else and hibernate like a bad-tempered bear. Well—it’s mostly passed now, except for a lingering cough which starts out innocently like a cat sneezing but ends up rumbling more like an underground rock slide.
 The “Purple Emperor” I’ve been doing plenty of knitting, though, much of it lying on my back, and having a ball with the Lopi jumper kit I got for Christmas, which is the ideal kind of present (even if, as they say, your present may require some assembly). But I’ll say more about that next week.
 In the meantime, I’ve cast on my next gansey project (another Wick pattern, as it happens) and set it aside—casting on isn’t my favourite occupation, and this will make it easy for me to pick up again when I’ve finished playing around with colours on chunky needles and am back in the stern and earnest world of single-colour ganseys.
 By way of encouragement and inspiration, Jane has sent me this picture of a splendid tam hat she knitted in delicate pastel colours. Just the thing for a cold winter’s day! (And jolly useful for the more folliclely-challenged among us…)
And now it only remains for Margaret and me to wish you all a very happy New Year, and here’s to a warm and colourful 2015 – and whatever’s on your needles, may it bring you, if not tidings, then at least comfort and joy!
 We were down in Edinburgh last week, seeing old friends and packing a year’s worth of shopping, coffee drinking and culture into just four days. The highlights? The sights and smells of the German market, which was like stepping into an Alpine village nativity play with added gluhwein; and the beautiful concert of Christmas music by the choir of King’s College, Cambridge at the Usher Hall.
Oh, and I caught another cold: it’s lodged in my chest so that I now have a cough like someone starting a motorbike on a frosty morning, and my breathing sounds like a rusty gate swinging in the breeze. (Immune systems are for sissies.)
 Imperial Stormtrooper at Waverley. Sort of. Anyway, here’s the thing. Over the last year or so I’ve been mulling over two questions: do I want to continue writing this blog, and do I only want to knit ganseys to the end of my days?
Let’s take the blog first. We started it back in 2008, and since then I’ve written over 300 posts and knitted a boatload of ganseys; over 100 people a day dial in to look at the site, and this year alone there’ve been some 110,000 web views. So I know it’s worthwhile. On the other hand, as Bob Dylan once said, there are times when a man feels he’s written enough songs—and let’s be honest, the same could be said of blogs about ganseys.
 Edinburgh Castle glows in the last rays of the day’s light But, while there are still plenty of patterns I’ve yet to explore (yes, I have a list), I never intended to knit only ganseys all my life. I’ve heard rumours, myths spoken in whispers by travellers to far-off mystical lands, of jumpers created using —I hardly know how to say this—more than one colour. I know it seems improbable but it is apparently true, and it’s something I’d rather like to try.
Which brings us to the point: if I were to take a break from ganseys to explore something different, what should I do about the blog? Would there be any point in continuing a blog about ganseys when it’s not in fact about ganseys?
Well, after thinking it through carefully, here’s what I’ve decided to do: starting in January, I’m going to try my hand at knitting an Icelandic Lopi sweater from a kit Margaret’s buying me for Christmas. I have no idea how I’ll get on, but it’ll be fun to find out; and, yes, I’ll still carry on with the blog as usual.
 Meanwhile, the old year is still with us, and so is the heather gansey—just the last half-inch cuff to go, and then the darning-in and washing. (By the way, we were going to take a break over Christmas, but under the circumstances we’ll add a short extra post on 29 December to put up photos of the finished garment.)
In parish notices, Judit’s been at it again, this time knitting a lovely collar using gansey patterns which she’s posted on Facebook. Have a look and give it a like; I think it looks as though it should grace the throat of a Lutheran pastor, or someone from a Holbein painting, it’s so elegant.
What else? Oh, yes. My two most popular novels (An Inquisition of Demons and The Cuckoo’s Nest) will be on a free promotion on Amazon until Boxing Day—so if you get a nice new Kindle for Christmas, there’s no excuse now not to download them.
And now it only remains for Margaret and me to wish you all a very happy Christmas, and to thank you for reading, and to so many of you for commenting, or emailing me offline. Happy knitting!
 Just a short blog this week, as we’re taking a break and going down to Edinburgh for a few days’ holiday to see old friends, do some Christmas shopping, go to a carol concert—and visit the Apple Store which has just been built literally next door to where I used to work, not that I’m bitter or anything, oh no, not at all; I’m sure they’ll build one in Wick soon.
We were going to go see The Hobbit Part Three while we were there, but then we realised it would be dark, grey and gloomy, filled with greed, decapitations and a desperate struggle for existence, all of which already make up such a large part of our life in Wick, and so decided to go see Paddington instead.
 Sunrise, 12.12.14 It’s been a wintry few days up here, sleet, hail, rain and snow, and the sort of winds that have weather presenters practicing how to say “weather bomb” in front of the mirror like a doctor telling you that perhaps you’d better sit down before he gives you the results; on the plus side, the temperature sometimes rose above freezing. (And still you see people strolling through town in T-shirts or short skirts—either they’re a shockingly hardy breed up here, or the alien invasion has already begun.)
 Stroma, with an icy Orkney beyond On the gansey, I’ve finished the first sleeve, cuff and all, picked up the stitches for the second and decreased the gusset out of existence like a stage magician making a pigeon disappear. Now it’s just a question of a hundred-odd rows of plain knitting, then the cuff and we’re done.
I might have finished it this week if we weren’t going to be away. Even so, it should still be done in time for New Year. Tune in next week for the last blog of the year, and news of some changes coming in 2015.
Till then, as it’s nearly Christmas, I leave you with this traditional carol:
In the Wick midwinter, rain had turned to sleet,
No matter how many pairs of socks you wore, you still had icy feet;
Sleet had fallen, then it rained, and it was dark by three,
In the Wick midwinter, sooner you than me…
 It looks as though Winter has finished all his chores, done all the washing up and ironed all his shirts, and is now free to devote his full attention to Caithness. So today an arctic gale has been blowing showers of sleet and rain horizontally across the fields all day, as though the frost giants had got themselves Indy cars and gone racing across the north Highlands.
 I took a day off work last week and we travelled the 104 miles south to Inverness, our nearest big town. In retrospect, this proved to be a schoolboy error: I’d naively imagined we might do some Christmas shopping, but when we arrived we discovered that the Black Friday sales have penetrated even as far as the Highlands of Scotland. The town centre was heaving with people like the Tokyo underground in rush hour and Marks and Spencer’s reminded me of archive footage of the Beatles playing Shea Stadium.
 I suppose I’ve just become acclimatised to living in Wick (pop. 7,333), where a crowd means having to queue behind two people at the checkout in Tesco’s. Going to Inverness in the sales involves the same amount of culture shock for me as sending one of the Pilgrim Fathers into hyperspace.
 I came away from Inverness with a pair of socks and a migraine. (I mean that these were additional things: I didn’t actually lose all my clothes—though there were one or two moments in the scrum in Marks’ when the issue seemed to hang in the balance.) Next time I could probably achieve the same result more cheaply by climbing into one of the industrial driers in the launderette.
Safely back in Wick, I’ve been working hard on getting the heather gansey finished and am already some 14 inches down the first sleeve with three inches to go to the cuff. I decided to go for just three pattern blocks on the upper arm because the jumper is already quite wide across the chest, and with a drop shoulder style there’s already a bit of “overhang” on the sleeve; I don’t like the pattern extending over the elbow. Having disposed of the gusset, I’m decreasing at a rate of 2 stitches every fifth row.
By next week I hope to have the first sleeve finished, and, if I can stand it, to have picked up the stitches ready for the other one. My target is to finish it by the end of the year, and then take stock. In the meantime, there’s little else to do but wrap up warm, crank up the heating, and make sure that in future all my Christmas shopping is done online…
 T.S. Eliot’s lines in his poem East Coker, “O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark,” are commonly supposed to be a reference (among other things) to people crowding into the London Underground for shelter during the Blitz in World War Two. I, however, have a simpler explanation: after living in Wick for three years it’s obvious Eliot was referring to a typical Caithness winter.
I don’t just mean the late sunrise (8.35am) and early sunset (3.27pm). I mean skies the colour of a recently-deceased porpoise stretching from horizon to horizon, behind which the sun lurks like a torch with a dying battery dimly glimpsed through a fog bank. It’s as if God cut a few corners when He made Caithness, using cheap dyes which have run in the rain, so that all the colour’s washed away from the world and only dreary grey remains.
 There are compensations, though. We went down to the harbour on Saturday at high tide, and the wind was driving the waves in from the ocean, breaking them against the harbour walls in showers of spray and submerging the piers so that they looked like vast stone submarines rising out of the sea. And now and then great waves swept into the harbour, so that standing on the quay and looking down on the suddenly swelling water it felt as though great whales were swimming past below, just out of sight.
 Good progress on the gansey. I’ve finished the body, joined both shoulders and knit the collar. As the neck is quite deep and wide I decided to make the collar a little higher than usual, about 1.75 inches, in the hopes that it won’t asphyxiate me when I sneeze. I’ve also picked up stitches round the first armhole, and am now cheerfully tobogganing down the left sleeve of destiny.
 For whatever reason, doubtless because I’ve been loosening my stitch gauge and there aren’t any cables to pull it in, this gansey has come out a bit shorter and wider than usual. I don’t think this will be a problem, though, as it will be stretched vertically at blocking; and anyway, it’s looking like we’re going to have a cold winter, so I need something to accommodate 17 layers underneath.
Finally, I’ve been contacted by Yasmin of the Hebridean Isles Trading Company to update their contact details (http://www.island-at-the-edge.co.uk/default.html). I hadn’t heard that they suffered a disastrous fire on Colonsay last December; as a result, they’ve relocated to the Isle of Skye where they’re re-establishing the business. We wish Yasmin and her family every success, admire their fortitude, and hope things come good for them very soon.
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As promised, here are some photos of the finished heather gansey based on the pattern worn by Stephen Hawker, the quondam vicar of Morwenstow in Cornwall. (I was unable to recreate the pose from the rev’s celebrated photograph, as every time I stood outside a church and stretched out my arm a parishioner would appear, look pitying on me, press a shilling into my palm, call me his good man and tell me not to spend it all on drink.)
In the meantime, I’ve cast on my next gansey project (another Wick pattern, as it happens) and set it aside—casting on isn’t my favourite occupation, and this will make it easy for me to pick up again when I’ve finished playing around with colours on chunky needles and am back in the stern and earnest world of single-colour ganseys.
By way of encouragement and inspiration, Jane has sent me this picture of a splendid tam hat she knitted in delicate pastel colours. Just the thing for a cold winter’s day! (And jolly useful for the more folliclely-challenged among us…)
