Gansey Nation

It’s the last post of the year, a time when traditionally we take stock of the previous twelvemonth and look forward to what the future might bring. But, I say—given how ghastly 2020 proved to be, and how uncertain 2021 looks just now, what say you we all just avert our gazes from current affairs and save the haruspicy to another, more fitting occasion? Instead, let us turn our attention to my favourite nature story of the year: octopuses randomly punching fish, apparently just out of spite.

Until I read this my highlight from the natural world in 2020 was the discovery of a new species of fungus that infects flies, turning them into “zombies”, until at a certain point the spores explode out of a hole in the insects’ abdomens “like rockets“, a fact which is going to liven up my reboot of the Alien franchise no end. But I must admit, the thought of bad-tempered octopuses patrolling the seabed looking for inoffensive fish to punch is way more fun. (Fun for the octopus, that is; less so, one feels, for the fish.)

Frosty Path Ahead

Perhaps the explanation lies in the fact that an octopus has a separate brain in each of its eight arms, thus making hangovers so much worse; or maybe one arm just wakes up in a particularly foul mood. (This is even better than my previous fun fact about octopuses, that they sometimes eat their own arms when they get bored; which always takes me back to a stunningly tedious lecture on the history of land law during my archive training in the winter of 1985, when gnawing my own arm off seemed like the only sensible alternative.) Anyway, I shall be disappointed if the coming year doesn’t bring us footage of two octopuses holding down a clown fish while a third beats it up for its lunch money.

St Fergus’ and hawthorn

In parish notices, and just in case you missed it last week, I was invited by the Scottish Fisheries Museum’s important Knitting the Herring project to write a short article on how I got into gansey knitting and where it has led me (spoiler alert: it led me to Wick). You can find the post here, as well as lots more information on the project.

Now it only remains for Margaret and me to wish all our readers a very happy—and safe—New Year. See you in 2021!

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TECHNICAL STUFF

My new project is another of the superb patterns from Yorkshire, this time in Frangipani Denim yarn. The pattern is recorded in both Gladys Thompson as “Filey Pattern IX”, and in Rae Compton (pp.58-59) under Flamborough, but knit by Carol Walkington of Bridlington for her husband Fred, coxswain of the Bridlington lifeboat.

You can tell it’s a good pattern because the cable rows, falling every sixth row, coincide with the plain rows of the chevrons, so you scarcely need to keep count. I’m following the pattern exactly, so instead of cabling every seventh row as I usually do, I’m cabling every sixth. In a certain light, the slant of the cables seems like an extension of the chevron.

It’s a pattern I’ve always wanted to try, but have in the past been put off—in a weak and feeble sort of way—by the sheer number of cables involved. (Of course, it’s the cables that help make it special.) Anyway, the chance to knit it has come at last, as this is a gansey for a work colleague who is, I suppose you’d say, fashionably svelte (the gansey will measure a trim nineteen inches across the body).

This also explains how much I’ve managed to get done in a week; well, that and the fact I’ve eaten so many chocolates over Christmas it currently takes a rope and pulley to get me out of the couch, like Henry VIII being winched onto horseback. I average three rows per hour, so I set myself a target of twelve rows, or two cables per day, the equivalent of four hours’ knitting spread through the day.

On Saturday Margaret and I strapped on our wellies and made for Dunbeath, about half an hour’s drive south of Wick, to visit Graeme Bethune at his farm of Ballachly. You may possibly remember that back in 2016—I’m now starting to add the suffix “BC” to historic dates, which stands for “Before Covid”—I knit a gansey for Graeme’s father George. The Bethunes have lived in Dunbeath for almost two centuries, and a photograph of Graeme’s great-grandfather in his gansey appears on page 37 of the Moray Firth Gansey Project book, Fishing for Ganseys. So there’s history there.

Expectant Faces

Graeme is a sheep farmer who trades as Caithness Yarns, and the reason for our visit was his recent foray into gansey yarn. But first we met his sheep, or “sheepies” as I shall now think of them, some of them in an open barn, others out in the fields. Even on a cold, wet, December afternoon, with bands of rain blowing in from the ocean on an icy wind, it’s a beautiful location: the fields sloping down to Dunbeath Strath, the river full and fast-flowing at this time of year, and the farther banks rising to gently sloping wooded hills, all exposed beneath the wide, sweeping Caithness skies. There are, you feel, worse places to be a sheep. The main breeds are North Country Cheviot and the smaller, horned Castlemilk Moorit, all traditional to the area. Graeme has adopted an ethical approach to his farming—as he says, his main crop is wool, and all aspects of oviculture on the farm, especially grazing, are designed to improve the quality of the fleece.

Treat time for the Castlemilk Moorits

Graeme’s first gansey yarn has been a traditional grey-black worsted, and he’s about to add an Ecru Cheviot and a Cheviot and Castlemilk Moorit blend to his range—what I think of as “cream” and “light brown”. Of course, his yarn isn’t cheap; but sometimes you really do get what you pay for, and what you’re paying for here is a commitment to quality and animal welfare. Like many farmers Graeme’s been hit hard this year, with the cancellation of so many wool festivals and shows where he would normally be able to sell his yarn and tell his story. It’s a good yarn and an important story, and one that deserves our support. So even if you’re not in the market for yarn just now, can I ask you please to spread the word? And when the world eventually emerges from hibernation, keep an eye out for Graeme at the next wool festival; and for the splendid yarn from his sheepies.

Shepherd & Sheep

Meanwhile, my current gansey is approaching the finishing line. The first sleeve is completed, and I’m about a third of the way down the other. (This is Wendy’s “A” dye lot, some of the last available, and I’m not pleased to note that I might run out before the cuff—the first time this has happened. Harrumph.) Will I finish it this week? To quote the famously equivocal President of the Neutral Planet from Futurama: “All I know is, my gut says maybe…”