Gansey Nation

Buckie: 7 February

Whenever he was feeling low in spirits, Ishmael—the narrator of Moby-Dick, I mean, not the son of Abraham and his maidservant Hagar—took to the sea. Of course, as things turned out this proved something of a schoolboy error, and Ishmael ended up shipping with a monomaniac one-legged captain determined to take revenge on God in the form of the white whale that had removed his leg.

Perhaps, he must have felt, as he bobbed in the empty ocean with only his friend’s empty coffin to keep him afloat, next time he was feeling low it’d be simpler all round to settle down in front of the tv with a bumper tin of Quality Streets, a tub of Ben and Jerry’s cookie dough ice cream and a box set of Roadrunner cartoons.

Droplets on Hawthorn

My solution is usually less drastic: I treat myself to a new fountain pen.

I love fountain pens—partly for their old-world elegance, reminiscent of a time when a man had to enter a room sideways to avoid bruising his handlebar moustache on the doorframe—but mostly because, if you do a lot of writing by hand, they’re just so much nicer to use. (Mind you, there are downsides: the ensuing ink stains on your fingers make you look like you’ve been handling stolen bank notes, and you have to explain to people under 30 that the device you are holding is something Sherlock Holmes would have used to write with, not administer a 7% solution; but these are trivial matters.)

Dunnet Beach from Castletown

Now don’t get me wrong: you might think, given my saturnine disposition, that the walls of my room would by now be lined with cases like the shop where Harry Potter bought his magic wand. Not so—I have a relatively modest collection of just half a dozen, vintage and contemporary. But each one writes in its own style and, like Harry’s wand, carries the memories of all the spells it’s cast.

Meanwhile I have reached the underarm gussets on the gansey. I am increasing at my standard rate, 2 stitches every fourth row, but this time I did something a little different: I increased another purl stitch into the side seam four rows before starting the gusset proper, so that the first increases don’t touch the sides of the body, something I’ve never really liked. This way it all happens inside the seam (a marginally more elegant solution to a problem nobody has but me).

Now, you may remember I was interviewed by a journalist last autumn who was writing an article on ganseys for the Scotsman newspaper online. Well, I never heard any more about it, and eventually assumed it had been spiked, or whatever the digital equivalent would be (depixellated, perhaps). But by chance I looked again this weekend and discovered that it had been published last November after all.

I haven’t actually read it. (I never do: I’ve had some bad experiences with journalists.) But if you’re curious, here’s the link. Just don’t tell me if it’s bad; besides, I don’t want to be interrupted—I’ve got all these Roadrunner cartoons to watch…

Buckie: 31 January

Well, we survived Storm Gertrude last week, which brought gusts of 60-70 mph to Wick (others had it worse; Shetland recorded gusts of over 100 mph); now we’re battening down the hatches for Storm Henry, expected Monday night into Tuesday, and the forecast is for much the same, or stronger. (The rate these gales are whistling through I expect to have received a visit from Storm Zachariah a week next Tuesday.)

The sea has torn a chunk out of Wick harbour wall, as though a very hungry whale had taken a large bite, for added roughage perhaps. There were trees down on the road to Inverness (Caithness has hardly any trees to speak of, just a few straggly bits of forest that make it feel as though the land was attempting a rather unconvincing combover). The fields are waterlogged, cattle and sheep standing bedraggled and miserable, ankle-deep in water (Caithness now twinned with the Grimpen Mire).

Near the end of the river path

We went to Inverness last week for my final trip to hospital (touch wood), to see the consultant about my mouth sores. After no less than four blood tests (the arm they took the blood from was so emaciated afterwards that I looked like a hermit crab) and a month of fasting and meditation, I finally had my answer: they don’t know what the cause is. (This is actually good news: it means it’s probably nothing serious, or at least nothing with the word “disease” in the title.)

The most likely cause is an allergy, possibly to spice, with cinnamates and benzoates strong candidates. So I’ve got another three months of trial abnegation to look forward to: no spicy food (so Indian, Mexican and Chinese cuisine is out), no tea, no strawberries, and—I can hardly type this for the tears running down my face, blurring my vision and short-circuiting my keyboard—no Easter eggs, no hot cross buns.

Trees by the river

Oh, well, he says bravely; there are always ganseys. I continue my long creep up the body which is now about 15 inches long. Next week, expect some exciting gusset-related news.

Speaking of knitting, many thanks to Judit for sending me this link to a piece on the health benefits of knitting from the New York Times. Unfortunately many of them seem to accrue from socialising with other people in knitting groups, whereas for me, knitting is the equivalent of a 30-year sentence in solitary confinement. Never mind! I’m sure it’s still therapeutic; as I said to Judit, it’s the equivalent of assembling your own cat over a period of weeks, and stroking it as you go.

Snow on the window

Oh, and if anyone was thinking of advising me to look on the bright side during my time of trial, I refer you to this superb piece of dialogue from PG Wodehouse’s The Mating Season. Bertie Wooster is up against it and Jeeves offers him some philosophical comfort:

Jeeves: “‘I wonder if I might draw your attention to an observation of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius? He said “Does anything befall you? It is good. It is part of the destiny of the universe ordained for you from the beginning. All that befalls you is part of the great web.'”

I breathed a bit stertorously. ‘He said that, did he?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Well, you can tell him from me he’s an ass.'”

Buckie: 24 January

As winter drags on, with snow shrouding America and rain and gales sweeping across Britain, I find myself returning to one of my favourite folk songs. It’s a traditional song called Awake, Awake, and I know it from the lovely Steeleye Span version. Based on the Old Testament Song of Solomon, it’s filled with longing for spring and, er, certain other things associated with spring.

It resonates with Biblical cadences. The first verse goes, “Awake, awake, oh northern wind, blow on my garden fair / Let my lover come to me and tell me of his care / For now the winter it is past, likewise the drops of rain / Come lie in the valley of lilies, midst the roses of the plain.”

Margaret’s been busy too

After that, of course, it gets a bit mucky (though it’s perfectly all right because it’s Scriptural). But that opening verse is wonderfully evocative, and the line, “For now the winter it is past, likewise the drops of rain” has become something of a mantra with me, a checklist for the changing of the seasons. I keep pulling open the curtains, only to find that the drops of rain most definitely are not past… not yet anyway. But soon.

Meanwhile I’m slowly working my way up the body of the gansey. I’m averaging two rows a night, more at weekends, and seem to be adding some 2.5 inches a week. (We’re in for the long haul here, people.) But, to quote my favourite Welsh saying, many drops wear away the stone; and in some ways this blog is time-lapse evidence I’m making progress.

Gordon’s new Lettlopi

I grew up with a deep and abiding love of folk music, something I’ve never really lost. The gold of traditional music has already been sifted in the pan of time, so that all the dross has been discarded; what’s left is the good stuff, an inexhaustible collection of all the one good tracks on the album.

It was cold last week.

It was folk music that eventually led me to Morris Dancing. Sadly, the Morris has a poor reputation over here, frequently despised by people who at the same time get emotionally involved in two groups of foreign millionaires kicking a ball around a field for 90 minutes. But really, with the Morris, what’s not to like? Great music, moderate exercise, cudgels and beer—you don’t get that down the chess club.

I experienced the equivocal British attitude to Morris dancing personally one time, when I landed awkwardly in a dance and sprained my ankle. I went to Northampton Hospital and was placed in a chair and wheeled off for an X-ray. As we rolled down the corridor the attendant, a friendly young man, enquired over my shoulder, “So, how’d you do it then, mate?” “Morris dancing,” I replied. He chuckled as he parked me in the waiting room. “Dickhead,” he said, without malice, and went away shaking his head.

Buckie: 17 January

Here’s a happy thought: we’re halfway through January, or 1/24th of the way to Christmas. The ghastly unseasonal weather of the New Year—with the rain rainething every day, as Shakespeare’s Feste, one of the earliest weather forecasters in literature, so correctly predicted—has given way to a spell of winter as tight as the grip of a miser’s shrivelled fist.

Ice on the river’s edge

Snow has come in the night, dusting the fields and pavements white; the latter are now especially treacherous, and people creep along as cautiously as tightrope walkers. Down by the river the footpaths are sheets of ice, and it’s fun to watch the dog walkers struggle to keep their feet as their excited charges jerk them back and forth in search of fresh scents, as unsteady as people trying on ice skates for the very first time.

I always get Proustian flashbacks to my time at school in this sort of weather, specifically the cross-country runs we had to go on. (Well, I say runs—we made a good show to the first corner, then dropped to a sort of shuffle just in case a teacher happened by, and finally, once we were out of sight of the school grounds, walked the rest of the way.)

Pointless though they were, they were never actually unpleasant, except when the wind from the tannery was blowing the wrong way—though for years I carried an image in my mind of us being harried by teachers with rifles on horseback, herding us into rivers and trapping us in nets, until I realised I was confusing my schooldays with the original Planet of the Apes movie.

There’s lots of parish news to get through this week, as everyone has obviously been very busy. First of all, apologies to Elisabeth for not having the comments on her new gansey open last week—she’s sent through some more pictures, which you can see here.

Lynne has taken inspiration from the herringbone/fish skeleton pattern from Norfolk Museums and has devised this splendid creation in deep ocean blue from Frangipani. And finally Katherine has sent pictures of this rather spiffing gansey based on Mrs Laidlaw’s pattern, with added zigzags.

Many congratulations to everyone concerned—and if your weather is at all like ours, you’ll be needing them right now.

One happy change that the weather has brought with the cold is actual clear blue sky and a low winter sun, our first of the year (my current theory on my allergies is that I’m intolerant of vitamin D). Curiously, the sickle moon is still visible even at noon, hanging there like a (fully operational) Death Star, which is a little unnerving. One of my favourite folk ballads has the line, “when the sun and moon meet in yonder glen, and that shall never be”—if only the writer had visited Caithness in January…

Buckie: 10 January 2016

Another week, another trip to Inverness hospital—this time to see if I have glaucoma: apparently I don’t (hurrah!). I did badly in the peripheral vision test, though, because I almost fell asleep—the weather up here has been alarming, gale force winds and rain making it hard to sleep, and the head rest was really very comfortable; until the nurse, who’d been watching me thoughtfully, taped open my eyelids with sticky tape.

The consultant also dilated my pupils, so that for a few hours I wore the surprised look of a nocturnal marsupial being goosed by David Attenborough, and everything seemed to be in blurry soft focus. It takes a few hours to wear off, and bright sunlight can be very painful; luckily, living as we do in the far north of Scotland, this was not a problem.

Sinclair Bay from Nybster

Here’s the pattern chart for the current gansey. As I mentioned last week, it’s based on a Buckie pattern in the Moray Firth Gansey Project book, but amended: I’ve changed the diamonds from moss stitch and made the panels larger, to fit the required number of stitches. (I decided against just having more pattern repeats, as I didn’t want too many cables pulling in the body.) The body is 368 stitches in the round, and I’m cabling every seventh row.

Speaking of ganseys, Elisabeth has sent a picture of a rather splendid one of her own design that’s she’s just finished, and which you can view here. It’s yoked with a full body pattern like the Hebridean ganseys, and it really is most effective combination. Congratulations to her on a sterling piece of work.

Meanwhile I’m still trying to adjust to my new allergen-free lifestyle, at least until the medical profession can establish what, if anything, is provoking the ulcers in my mouth. The food restrictions, even the ban on chocolate and crisps, I can live with; but the difficulty turns out to be avoiding sodium laurel sulphate (SLS): it’s in everything! Or every toiletry item, at least.

If you weren’t aware of it before, it’s the substance that puts the lather in soaps and shampoos, and makes moisturiser feel silky smooth; and it is ubiquitous. As a result, I’ve had to replace everything from bath foam to lip balm, which has proved something of a challenge, not to mention making bath time rather less fun.

I’d read online that the Body Shop make SLS-free bath salts, so I thought I’d buy some while we were on holiday down south. I explained what I was looking for to the assistant, who helpfully located it on the shelf. But after I’d paid I realised she was acting under a misapprehension, for she gave me a very knowing leer and whispered confidentially, “She won’t be disappointed with this, sir” and all but waggled her eyebrows and nudged me in the ribs.

Wick Harbour Light

Obviously middle-aged men in Northampton only buy Body Shop products for their mistresses. I felt like a newly-wed husband buying something with batteries from an Ann Summers shop (not that we have those sorts of emporia up here; instead we’re supposed to rely on the Tesco motoring department and an active imagination). Well, it was all very awkward. I didn’t have the heart to tell her, but as I exited the shop with as much dignity as I could muster I saw her talking to two other girls, both of whom giggled and watched me go with a curious blend of admiration and disbelief. In future I’ll be buying online; it’s safer. In fact, it’s probably best if I never leave the house again…

Gansey Nation

Buckie: 7 February

Buckie: 31 January

Buckie: 24 January

Buckie: 17 January

Buckie: 10 January 2016

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