Support Gansey Nation -


Buy Gordon a cuppa!


Many, many thanks to those of you who have already contributed!





(Navy) Week 5: 26 June

Britain has been basking in unusually hot weather for the time of year. All over the country records have been tumbling—ice creams melting in the cone, unshorn sheep fainting in the fields, people not bothering to turn on the cooker but instead cooking dinner on the doorstep—and I’m pleased to report that Wick has been no exception. Last weekend, we set a new record temperature for June: a whopping 21ºC (or 69.8ºF). This really tells you all you need to know about life in Caithness.

Flecks of foam on the river

We’re paying for it now, of course. The winds are gusting up to 45 mph, we’re getting the sort of rainfall that would have had Noah tapping his barometer and looking thoughtful, and it’s a brisk 13ºC. The grass is standing high in the fields and the wind ripples through it as though armies of tiny pixies (such as Terry Pratchett’s wonderful Nac Mac Feegles) are on the march. Sometimes when I look up I see a crow exactly balanced against a fulcrum of opposite forces, perfectly motionless against the wind, as though the Creator had pinned it there while He got on with something more challenging, such as the questions of free will or why men have nipples, and simply forgot all about it.

Peony seedhead

Meanwhile in gansey news I have reached the momentous stage of dividing front and back, with the gussets completed to the halfway stage and safely tucked on holders. And I can now reveal that the pattern is the wonderful Mrs Laidler’s of Whitby, a real classic and possibly my very favourite gansey pattern of all. It’s not especially difficult, so long as you can remember which row you’re on, but it knits up a treat. Navy yarn seems to suit it particularly, too—when the light catches it just so it shines like a monochrome persian carpet, or illuminated manuscript. I am, you can probably guess, a fan.


TECHNICAL STUFF

There will be 6 cables panels of 20 stitches on the front and back, with 5 flags of 13 stitches in between (an 11-stitch flag with a plain stitch either side).

To give me the right number of stitches I increased by 6 stitches per side on the first row of the cable pattern. This is the first time I’ve done this to any extent: it’s to compensate for the way the cables tend to pull in the pattern in and make the gansey  narrower. The more cables you have, the narrower your yoke will be, and an increase of one stitch per cable is a way of counteracting this effect. And as I was going to have 6 cables, I thought I’d better do something about it or else lose weight fast. (On reflection, the extra stitches seemed easier…)

(Navy) Week 4: 19 June

On Wednesday it will be the solstice and the longest day. The real meaning of the summer solstice is, of course, that we’re already halfway to Christmas—it’s the first wobble of the yearly spinning top, a sort of memento mori for the summer. Don’t enjoy this too much, it seems to say: yes, that punnet of strawberries still lies ahead, that lazy afternoon on the riverbank hoping to catch a glimpse of Ratty and Moley out for a row, but so eventually does that pair of extra-thick thermal long johns that make you look like an over-inflated balloon animal.

In Wick the sun will rise at 4.04 am and set at 10.23 pm. All across Britain people will gather at sites laden with sacred significance, such as Stonehenge and Milton Keynes, and watch the sun rise in perfect alignment with ancient symbols, viz., stone monoliths and a shopping mall respectively. In accordance with Caithness tradition, here the ritual will be slightly different: instead we’ll take an astrolabe and a set of astronomical tables and try to work out where the hell the sun is, since it will probably be hidden behind a wall of grey cloud.

In gansey related news, I’ve almost finished the plain knitting of the body. My ideal length for a gansey is about 28 inches: 4 inches for the welt, 12 for the body, 3 for the start of the yoke and the gussets, 8 for the rest of the yoke, and finally one inch for the shoulder strap. At least I’ve now decided on a pattern (it’s one of my favourites but not one I’ve knitted for many years); all will be revealed next week.

Grand Union Canal near Gayton

And now I see the sun is out after all. I suppose I really should go outside and enjoy it; but then all these Christmas cards won’t write themselves…

(Navy) Week 3: 12 June

Another short blog, as by the time you read this we shall be back down south for my father’s funeral. (I’m writing this on last Friday, as it were, so there’s not a lot of progress to report, just an inch or so of plain knitting up the body. Think of this as a sort of gansey-related time capsule, a metaphorical message in a bottle from the past.)

It’s been raining a lot

Britain has just held a general election to choose a new government, always a fairly depressing experience. Still, it’s usually enlivened by the fringe candidates, whose main reason for standing is just to inject some fun into the whole exercise. This is something that appears to be sadly lacking in other countries—after all, Barack Obama never had to campaign against Lord Buckethead (a man literally wearing a bucket on his head). And as for the splendidly costumed Mr Fishfinger, well, just imagine Hillary Clinton fighting a presidential campaign against a ridiculous figure in an outsize orange fat suit. (Oh, wait…)

In Scotland, the drop in support for the SNP makes the prospect of another independence referendum in the near future more unlikely. And overall Labour lost but it feels like a victory, partly because of the unexpectedly close result, partly because they ran a campaign based on hope (even if it was partly a hope they wouldn’t have to deliver on everything). Though as John Cleese famously said in the movie Clockwatch, “It’s not the despair, Laura. I can take the despair. It’s the hope I can’t stand…”

We’ll be back home, and with any luck back to normal next week. Happy knitting!

(Navy) Week 2: 5 June

Summer has come to Caithness, for a given value of summer. As a result everything’s fluffier: the ducklings on the river now resemble little tennis balls with legs, and the hedges and trees and fields are all thicker, lusher, greener, stickier. The sun rises at 4.11 am and sets at 10.11 pm—which means the birds start doing their morning exercises three hours before the alarm goes off, and it’s so light at bedtime it feels like it’s still the middle of the afternoon. Sleep at this time of year, you will have guessed, is very much an optional extra.

Caithness summers are so brief—sometimes barely even an afternoon—that living through one is a little like watching a time-lapse film. At this time of year a sharp east wind still comes in off the sea and it’s amusing to see the world become divided into two camps: the locals, who stroll nonchalantly about in shorts eating ice cream; and the tourists, who wear anoraks and cling drunkenly to flat surfaces like shipwrecked mariners who’ve abandoned hope of ever seeing their loved ones again. You see them at John O’Groats making a dash for the famous signpost, staying just long enough to get a photo and then running back to the car, as though there’d been a radiation leak from Dounreay and they only had 60 seconds before they caught a lethal dose. 

Laid out to dry

One advantage of these light evenings is that I can sit by the window and knit a yarn as dark as navy till 10.00 pm, and still see perfectly well; this explains why I’m zipping along despite being back at work full time. (I should start the yoke pattern in a fortnight’s time, around the summer solstice, i.e., maximum daylight for any fiddly bits. I still haven’t settled on a pattern, though I’ve narrowed it down to a couple of my favourites, both of which I’ve knit previously: one of them—gulp—over 20 years ago.)

Finally, in a week that’s seen precious little to smile about, I’d like to share with you one of my favourite jokes. I’ve seen it in various versions, and applied to various nationalities, but this is the one I learned, and it’s from Finland. Two Finns go into a bar and order two drinks. They sit at their table in silence for a while contemplating their drinks. After an age one of them picks up his and says, “Cheers!” The other one looks at him reproachfully and says, “Hey! Did we come here to talk or did we come here to drink?” [Dedicated to all our Finnish friends—hyvä terveys!]