Support Gansey Nation -


Buy Gordon a cuppa!


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

Wick (Moss & Diamonds): Week 11, 23 February

A slightly late blog this week because I am laid low with computer problems. They’re completely of my own making. I won’t bore you with details but suffice it to say that I deleted a lot of data to clear space on the drive. I hoped that should I need to, the data would be easily accessible again through backups, but it hasn’t been that straightforward. The backups are there, but the computer takes a long time to put everything back in place. While I wait for files to shift from A to B, I find other things to do so it can work without interruptions.

Back yard snowdrops

The weather this week is finally shifting towards spring. It feels like it has been a very long time coming. A few mornings ago, I heard a bird singing, always a sure sign of the changing season. The snowdrops in the back yard are in full bloom, and I’m happy to see that they are spreading. Daffodils are pushing up along the river side.

Lybster lighthouse

The small Gansey group who meet a few miles down the road started up again this week after a break while the venue was closed. We got to talking about words and the names of things. One of the questions was, where does the word “gansey” originate? The answer seems to be “lost in the mists of time“, but it possibly has a Nordic origin. A very similar word is used for a pullover in Scandinavia and from the north of England up to Scotland. This led to one of the women mentioning that in Egypt the word for beer is “buza”, and of course she wondered if that was the origin of the English “booze”. The trusty Oxford English dictionary is mute on whether this is the origin of the word, but it first appears in English in the 14th century, as a verb meaning “To drink deeply, or for the sake of enjoyment or goodfellowship”. In the 18th century, it began to be used as a noun. Another OnLine source traces its origin to germanic languages.

The old Lifeboat House from above

As I’m not much one for boozing, I have been soberly knitting the gansey. I’ve done the tedious picking up of stitches around the armhole for the first sleeve. The ratio that seems to work best is two stitches per three rows. Using this ratio, 72 stitches on front and back were picked up, plus 24 for the shoulder strap. The shoulder straps were knit from the armhole edge to the neck, starting with the magic cast on from Knitty. The advantage of doing it this way is that there are live stitches at both ends of the shoulder strap. The sleeve will have the same patterning as the yoke and body, ending with a ribbed cuff.

 

 

 

 

   

23 February 2026 | 2 comments

Wick (Moss & Diamonds): Week 10, 16 February

I opened the curtains several days ago to a sight that has rarely been seen for the past month – wall-to-wall sunshine.  As well as the glorious brightness, the wind had dropped too.  Although it had shifted to a northerly, there was some warmth in the sun.  Crocuses have started to pop up alongside the snowdrops, and the yellow blooms of winter aconite are nodding above their Kermit-like collars.  Knowing how fickle weather can be, I’ve got my fingers crossed – sleet and ice are in the forecast. At least the hope of Spring is out there.

Snowdrops and crocus

Except on Friday, when I opened the curtains to a blizzard.  It was quite exciting for a few moments.  It soon tailed off, and by the time I went out for a walk, the snow had disappeared except in shaded, sheltered nooks.  Having grown up in New England, the winters here always seem half-hearted.  A few inches here or there, and the snow has usually melted within a few days.  Hence the excitement when it looked like it might actually accumulate.

No raindrops on the window this week

Later that morning, being sleep deprived, I did something very stupid.  I forgot to put the water in the bottom of my little moka coffee pot, something that happens occasionally.  Thinking I could quickly open and fill it, I unclipped the top while it was on the burner.  Silly me, I’d completely overlooked that the contents were under pressure.  Water and coffee grounds exploded everywhere – the stove, the floor, me.  I was lucky to avoid being scalded. After a quick mop-up of the stove and a trip to the washing machine, coffee was made successfully.  I’ll be more careful next time.

Curious

St Valentine’s Day rolled around last week.  Like Christmas, birthdays, and anniversaries, it’s one of those days where you reflect on what you had and what you’ve lost.  Going around the supermarket with all its heart-laden displays still makes my heart heavy.  I decided to celebrate instead of pine, and bought a box of chocolates, choosing one of Gordon’s favourites. 

Between extra online meetings and orchestra practice, I’ve had limited knitting time this week.  I try to catch up when I can by having longer sessions with a talking book.  The shoulder straps have been completed and there’s only a few rows to go on the neck.  The original plan for the straps had been to repeat the yoke patterning.  I was two-thirds done the first shoulder strap when I decided that it just wasn’t working.  The moss and diamonds were too large to fit neatly on the strap’s width and length.  For the second attempt, I used only moss stitch.  While it isn’t like the original photo, moss stitch shoulders appear in other gansey photos.

Approaching flurry

 


   
16 February 2026 | 3 comments

Wick (Moss & Diamonds): Week 9, 9 February

The weather.  After ‘How are you?’, it’s often one of the first topics of conversation.  ‘Isn’t it cold’, ‘Lovely fine weather we’re having’, etc.  But just now, ‘Isn’t it cold’ is frequently followed by ‘I can’t wait for it to end’ or ‘When will it stop?”.  For the weather is still the same, and it’s been nearly a month.  This time last year, we were having sunshine.  I look back at my photos incredulously; the blue skies seem unbelievable. 

This week has been much like the last with the same activities. The notable exception was a visit to the dentist for a yearly check-up.  It was sleeting on the way there and showering with snow on the return.  In between, I passed my check-up with flying colours.  I mentioned I was having sensitivity in one of my teeth.  She explained it was due to bone loss and would varnish the offending tooth near the gum to lessen the effects.  While still wondering how this would work, she dabbed it on the tooth and immediately cured it with a handheld UV light.  They cure fillings with UV light too.  Such technological advances!  It’s a far cry from the dentistry of my childhood.  Now, if they would only invent a drill that doesn’t whine like a buzz saw. 

This time last year . . .

With the sewing projects, I’ve tried on the velvety dress and the pinafore.  Both have hemlines that are too long.  The dress is too long through the torso and needs shortening by at least four inches.  The pinafore reaches to the top of my feet and will need at least six inches taken off.  The hemming will get done when I determine the best way to do both tasks.  It’s not a simple matter of trimming off the excess.  For that to be successful, the garment needs to have a level hem to start with.  In the case of the pinafore, one part is longer than the rest.

This time last year: looking through the lifeboat house supports.

Such good progress is being made on the gansey that I’m beginning to think it might be finished by the end of the month.  I’m a handful of rows away from finishing the front.  The gansey will have an indented neckline.  To work this,  I’ve taken the number of stitches on the front and divided it by three (180 / 3 = 60).  Then I’ve divided that number by four (60 / 4 = 15), and added that number to the first and last thirds (60 + 15 = 75).  These augmented thirds are the on either side of the neck, and the centre half third (60 – 30 = 30) is the bottom of the neck opening.  The ‘thirds’ needn’t be precisely a third – it will depend on the number of stitches and if you want to align the neckline edge with the stitch pattern. The neckline is shaped by reducing one stitch at the neckline edge every other row until the added quarter is gone.  At that point, the shoulder is knit straight to the required length.  In this case, the decreases for the neck edge end at the top, where it will be joined to the shoulder strap.

 

 

 


   
9 February 2026 | 4 comments

Wick (Moss & Diamonds): Week 8, 2 February

As frequently happens, this week was much like last week.  The weather has been the same, except perhaps for an added seasoning of brief glimpses of blue sky.  I did the same things and went the same places.  The sewing project has changed from a jumper/pinafore to a velvety dress.  The jumper/pinafore has quite a long hemline and I’m delaying hemming as long as possible.  The velvety dress is being made using a pattern from a new-to-me company based in Berlin.  So far, I’ve only sewn the pockets, and that took an afternoon of multiple pinnings, hand bastings, and removing bastings.    

So I’m afraid I’ll have to fall back on ‘what happens today’.  The most obvious, of course, is Groundhog Day.  The internet, that fount of useful and useless knowledge, also informs me that two other rodents share the day – hedgehogs and marmots.  Marmot Day is celebrated in Alaska, where it became an official holiday in 2009. Other animals also have their day today, notably brown dogs and sled dogs.

For those of you with a musical bent, it is National Ukelele Day.  In the UK, 2 February (or the first Monday in February), has been designated ‘National Sickie Day’.  This was coined in 2011 after research showing that it was the day workers were most likely to be absent.  More recently, other Mondays have supplanted 2 February.  Last year it was 6 January.

But before all these ‘fun’ holidays came about, there was Candlemas.  This day, one of the oldest ‘holy days’, denotes the end of Christmas, the Presentation of Christ in the temple, and the Purification of Mary.  Secular celebrations take various forms.  In France, crepes are consumed, in Mexico, tamales.  In Poland, candles were placed in windows to ward off storms.  However, the focus of the holiday is to celebrate the Virgin Birth, a central tenet of Christianity.

Shot of a lifetime, 2025 – a gull’s shadow on a slate upright

Various interesting events happened on 2 February.  In 1653, New Amsterdam became a city.  It was later renamed New York City.  In 1848, the first Chinese immigrants arrived in San Francisco.  Four years later, in 1852, the first public men’s toilet opened in London.  In 1876, the baseball National League was formed, with teams from Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Hartford, Louisville, New York, Philadelphia, and St Louis.  But the patent issued today in 1892 is probably the one that affects us most.  This patent, granted to William Painter, was for the bottle cap.  While it can an inconvenience when we can’t find the tool to lever it off, the new cap was more reliable than other methods used at the time.

The gansey has been coming along very nicely, despite a minor reversal last week.  I’ve put in long talking book sessions to fit in more knitting, and am pleased to say that the back is now complete.  The stitch pattern isn’t complicated, and once it’s set up there’s no need to refer to a chart.  This speeds things up too.

 

 

 


  

 

2 February 2026 | One comment