Gansey Nation

It’s shameless self-promotion time, for I have just self-published a collection of my poems on Amazon. (Or rather, my dear friend Song has formatted and published it for me.) It’s print-on-demand only at the moment, but a Kindle version should be available soon. And why am I launching them on an unsuspecting world? To quote the Old English proverb: Ciggendra gehwelc wile þœt hine man gehere, “Everyone who cries out wants to be heard.”

Snow falling at sunset

Though if you are thinking of buying a copy (and all receipts will go towards running the blog) I should offer a word of caution. You remember The Picture of Dorian Gray? The one where the hero lives a life of carefree debauchery and stays eternally young and debonair, while his portrait ages in his stead and becomes bloated and diseased? Well, if this gansey’s blog is my Dorian Gray, the poems are the equivalent of his portrait. They’re the other side of me, the side that exists so the me who writes this blog can function. They’re just not necessarily what you might call cheerful, so caveat emptor and all that.

Still, just think what a perfect last-minute Christmas present they will make. Imagine the delight on the faces of your children as they go to unwrap that Lego Hogwarts castle they asked for—a little anxious as to the small size of the present, but still hopeful—only to find instead a collection of poetry filled with bleak, existential despair. If that doesn’t set them up nicely for the crushing disappointments of adulthood I don’t know what will. Are the poems any good? The flickers of pain that cross the faces of my poetical friends when they read them suggest not. But they’re out there now, and must take their chance. As the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams said, when asked about his fourth symphony, “I don’t know whether I like it, but it’s what I meant”. Me too, Ralph, me too.

Pancake ice heading out to sea

And now we wish all our readers a very merry, safe and warm Christmas. Next week, join us if you can for the traditional Gansey Nation Christmas singalong.

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TECHNICAL STUFF

Pattern for top of sleeve

It’s amazing how quickly things come together at this stage after such a long haul. So in the last week I’ve finished the front, joined the shoulders, knit the collar, and picked up stitches round the armhole and started the first sleeve. Suddenly it looks like a gansey-to-be.

I picked up 136 stitches around the armhole, or 68 stitches per side. I’ve noticed that my stitch gauge is a little bigger knitting sleeves on double-pointed needles than knitting the body on circular needles. I don’t know why this should be, but it’s not much and it doesn’t bother me enough to experiment with smaller needles. In a pattern with cables, you’d never notice. But in a sleeve like this with plain knitting there’s a risk the top of the sleeve balloons out widely like the puffy sleeves of Hamlet’s shirt. So I cast on slightly fewer stitches—136 instead of 144—and it seems to work out.

I’ve been reading Moby-Dick again, one of my all-time favourite gloomy novels (of which I have a surprisingly large number). But what I didn’t know was that academics have recently discovered an early draft, an unfinished manuscript in which Melville evidently first set the novel in the herring fishing, and not that of the whale. In this extract Ahab addresses the skipper of another boat:

“That ship ahoy! This is Captain Ahab of the Pequod out of Nantucket!”
“The who of the what now?”
“The Pequod! Out of Nantucket.”
“It says ‘Saucy Sue’ on the side.”
“Aye, well, I’ve been meaning to get that painted.”
“And the registration’s a Wick number.”
“Avast there! Hast seen the White Herring?”
“The what?”
“The White Herring! Hast thou seen Spotted Dick?”
“Look, mate, herrings are sort of silvery and scaly. You know, as in that’s why they’re called the silver darlings?”
“This one has a snow-white head, a crooked jaw and a hump shaped like a pyramid on his back.”

Contrejour phragmites

“We’re still talking about a herring, here? Thing about the size and shape of a large carrot?”
“Aye, and we’re on a damned cruise to hunt him down.”
“But what on earth dost thou—I mean, do you—want with him?”
“Seest thou this leg? That devil in piscine form dismasted me off Japan.”
“Now, when you say he dismasted you…?”
“Took this leg clean off.”
“A herring did that?”
“They’re vicious beggers when you arouse their hunting instincts.”
“And this herring took off your leg?”
“Aye.”
“That leg you’re standing on, you mean?”
“Aye.”
“But, and I want you to follow me closely here, it looks fine.”
“No it doesn’t.”
“Yes it does. Look, there’s a great big tear in your trousers! I can see your leg clean through it.”
[An awkward pause ensues]

Glowing in the afternoon

“Ahahaha, well, when I say he dismasted me, I mean he gave me a nasty nip on the finger once. Broke the skin and everything.”
“Really.”
“Stung rather a lot, I can tell thee. For, oh, at least a minute. And so I’m hunting him down in his capacity as God’s agent in order to wreak my vengeance on God himself!”
“Um, no offence but has it ever occurred to you that you might be over-thinking this?”
“Bah! I see thou canst tell me nothing.”
[Other skipper to himself, muttering] “Thou’rt a looney, I can tell thee that much.”
“Avast!” [Ahab turns to his crew] “Ship oars, Queequeg.”
“I keep telling you, my name’s Sebastian and I just paid for a short cruise around the harbour.”
“Hush, Queequeg, never be ashamed of who thou art. Now, Starbuck, where’s my coffee..?”

Sadly the manuscript breaks off there; and so it remains one of the great, tantalising what-ifs of literature…

Afternoon walk by the river

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TECHNICAL STUFF

I’ve finished the back, my standard eight inches from dividing front and back to the start of the shoulder straps. And now we can see it whole, the simple repetition of the pattern really pays off; and very striking it looks.

I usually divide each side into threes at the shoulders, one-third each for the two shoulders and the collar. As there are 179 stitches per side I’d intended to make the shoulders 60 stitches each and the collar 59, but owing to taking my eye off the ball at the crucial moment (reader, I just lost concentration) I have 58 stitches on each shoulder and a slightly wider collar of 63; not that it matters, especially as I don’t like tight necklines. Next week we turn it over and do it all again for the front.