Gansey Nation

Just before ten on Sunday morning the alarm company called to say the intruder alarms were going off at the library, and would I mind frightfully popping round to see what the problem was?

Usually when this happens it’s because a spider has inadvertently crossed the grid of laser beams, or a woodlouse has sneezed and triggered the internal decibel monitor, so I was more annoyed than worried. But when I got there this time the front door was hanging ajar.

Now, it’s never a comfortable feeling to enter a supposedly empty building with an intruder alarm ringing in your ears, and certainly not when you see the door’s been forced open and everyone else in town still seems to be in bed. And while it’s possible the people of Wick are so keen on culture that they’ll break into a library on a Sunday morning to get their hands on it, I wouldn’t bet my life on it.

Old Lifeboat House, Wick

Well, as it turned out there weren’t any crazed knife-wielding coked-up meth-drinking second-hand book dealers in there; whoever had forced the door had obviously run off when the alarm sounded. (I wasn’t taking any chances, though—I’d got my archivist’s utility belt with me, which is much like Batman’s, except whereas his has grapnels, ninja weapons and ropes, mine has a pencil, an eraser, and a sheet of acid-free paper.)

Now I think of it, this is the first time in what I laughingly think of as my career that I’ve been called out to a genuine break-in; usually it’s false alarms, like one New Year’s Eve in Wales when an air conditioning conduit sprang a leak and pumped out steam so thick it triggered the smoke alarm.

Staxigoe on a sunny day

The biggest disaster I ever faced was in Milton Keynes, where the archives were stored in a factory unit. Over the Christmas holidays a water pipe in the kitchen had burst, blasting a hole in the wall and then slowly filling the unit with water. By the time I came back to work the whole building had three inches of water in it, I remember it cascading out over my shoes when I unlocked the door. (This is why good archivists, like we were, always have the bottom shelf a few inches off the floor; and why good archivists, like we weren’t, never store boxes of records on the floor because they’ve run out of space…) Sometimes I wonder if I’d taken an extended holiday whether the water would eventually have emerged out the chimney, or if the building would simply have burst?

In gansey news, I’ve reached the gussets: more proof, if any were needed, that slow and steady, if not actually wins the race, at least finishes the marathon several days after everyone’s gone home. I’m aiming for a long body, over 28 inches, and so I knitted 16 inches from the cast-on before starting the gussets.

Finally this week, I’m delighted to say that the Wick Heritage Museum has accepted the second Wick-patterned gansey I knit as a gift; the other one is already on display, worn by a dummy in rather better shape than yours truly, and this one may join it. I flirted with the idea of knitting a full boat’s crew of ganseys once—but that was typically eight men, and at my advanced time of life I’m only thinking of short-term projects…

Wick lies on the south side of a long promontory that stretches out into the North Sea, with the lighthouse at Noss Head gleaming on the farthest tip like the red nose of Rudolph the eponymous reindeer. On the north side, overlooking Sinclair’s Bay, is the ruined castle of Sinclair Girnigoe where we went at Easter.

Usually when I think of castles I imagine the great Welsh and English fortresses of Harlech or Warwick, the kind of buildings a Dark Lord would besiege with an army of orcs. Caithness is different: here the castles are perched on thin slivers of rock jutting into sea from the local inlets or goes like hangnails on a giant’s big toe.

Sinclair Girnigoe is a hell of a location, just the wide sweep of the bay and the ocean before you and the narrow promontory at your back. It was more or less impregnable before the age of cannon, as from the sea you’re faced with sheer cliffs and the only way in by land was over the drawbridge. It’s all ruins now, the haunt of a rather sharp wind and some stroppy seagulls which perch on the crumbling walls flipping coins and spitting out of the corner of their beaks.

Sinclair Girnigoe is about the same size as our house and garden, though to be fair no one’s ever tried to assault us in Miller Avenue using cannon – yet. Still, inspired by this I may submit a planning application for a drawbridge and portcullis, if only to keep out trick-or-treaters at Halloween, and especially the neighbours’ cats.

In knitting news, I’m settling into a groove with the Flamborough gansey, and the pattern is starting to emerge more clearly. It’s an easy one to keep track of, with a change every two rows. (Incidentally, is it just me or does knitting a gansey always feels like cloning an old fisherman from the bottom up?)

Finally this week, a word about the new edition of Michael Pearson’s Traditional Knitting. I received my copy last week, and although I haven’t had a chance to go through it in detail, a few points stand out. First of all it’s significantly expanded, and now includes patterns and photographs from his other books, such as the one on the Scottish fleet; secondly it now includes more charts, as well as an index; and thirdly the photographs are sharper than before, the patterns easier to make out.

So, if you already have the original is this new edition worth buying? My opinion is, yes, definitely, it’s much more than just a reissue. And if you don’t already have it, well, what are you waiting for…?

As promised, here is the finished Wick gansey, blocked and ready to go. The pattern still remains something of an enigma, but it is what it is, and so I send it out into the world to take its chances, in much the same spirit as my teachers parted with me at the end of my schooldays: unsure if I’d end up as prime minister or on death row—or possibly both.

We’re just starting our Easter break, and will be spending the next few days at my parents’ house in Northamptonshire, out of reach of the modern world, or at least that part of it that involves the internet. So apologies: I won’t be able to respond to any posts or emails this week.

There’s just one parish notice: Bobbins of Whitby have moved—please see their comment on the Suppliers page for further information, and we wish them all the best in their new home.

As it’s not a regular blog this week I hope you won’t mind if instead I share something with you. One of my favourite books is a slim little volume by the German author Hermann Hesse called Wandering, published in 1920 and consisting of brief essays, sketches and poems inspired by a walking tour he made over the Alps into Italy.

It’s a sentimental, naïve, thoughtful, wise and touching collection, out of print now as the values Hesse espoused are seemingly out of fashion in our materialistic age.

Here’s one of my favourite passages, inspired by a mountain pass, in which he reflects on how his response to nature has changed from when he was younger:

Everything belongs to me more than ever before. It speaks to me more richly and with hundreds of nuances. My yearning no longer paints dreamy colours across the veiled distances, my eyes are satisfied with what exists, because they have learned to see. The world has become lovelier than before.

The world has become lovelier. I am alone, and I don’t suffer from my loneliness. I don’t want life to be anything other than what it is. I am ready to let myself be baked in the sun till I am done. I am eager to ripen. I am ready to die, ready to be born again.

The world has become lovelier.

Gansey Nation will be back on Monday 13th April; till then—happy Easter from Gordon and Margaret!