Gansey Nation

Evening all. Before we get started, I’d like to flag up a couple of slight changes to the website you may have noticed. First of all, we’ve amended the Gallery pages so that the ganseys are grouped by region of origin now; basically I’ve been knitting so long the list was scrolling off the bottom of the screen! So hopefully this will make them more accessible, as well as useful.

Secondly, we’ve added a PayPal button to the left-hand border. This is so that anyone who wishes to make a contribution to the costs of running the site, and keeping me supplied with Guernsey 5-ply yarn, cups of coffee and, ahem, bars of tablet, can now do so whenever they like.

(Important note: any contributions are entirely voluntary, and I won’t know who has or hasn’t made one. It won’t the blindest bit of difference to the way Margaret and I respond to comments or emailed queries. It’s entirely up to you. The site will be free to access, just as it is now. But if you’ve enjoyed reading the blog, or if you’ve ever found the techniques useful in your own knitting projects, and wanted to make a donation, well, now you can.)

The alternatives were to make the site subscription-only, or allow advertising, and we really didn’t want to go down that road. And speaking of roads, have you ever considered buying a new Hyundai Paracetamol land cruiser? A unique blend of rotational steering, traction engine technology and organic chemistry; for a headache-free drive contact your local dealer now!

Oh, I’m most terribly sorry—I can’t think what came over me.

Where was I? Oh, yes. I’ve reached that exciting part of knitting a gansey when the body is jettisoned like the first stage of a Saturn V rocket, flaring away and falling back to earth, and the small but dedicated crew soar onwards, free of the dead weight, to their goal—in their case, landing on the moon; in mine, finishing the back of the jumper. It’s always good to reach this stage, even though I have to pay close attention, as the pattern is now reversed every other row.

As you’ll see from the picture Margaret is still taking commissions from Galadriel for hand-knitted lingerie. It’s nice to have the work, of course, but it’s a bugger knitting with thistledown and unicorn hair, even with a unicorn farm just down the coast, and then it has to be washed in dryads’ tears or else it shrinks—luckily, though, some of them voted Liberal Democrat in last week’s general election so tears weren’t hard to come by…

Ah, yes, the election. Scotland has voted overwhelmingly for the Scottish National Party. It’s both a complete shock and yet hardly a surprise: the way the main UK parties have been treating Scotland recently I almost expected a shipment of tea to be dumped in Wick harbour by men dressed as Native Americans. Now the whole country seems gripped by a sort of wild uncertain excitement, like a nuclear physicist who’s just pressed the large button on the console and is suddenly wondering if in his calculations he remembered to carry the one…

As someone who preserves the documentary DNA of history it’s interesting to find myself living through these times: history, as they say, never stops.

The game’s afoot, as Sherlock Holmes used to say. Well, Sherlock, I’ve got news for you: so’s my gansey. (In fact it’s nearer 13 inches than a foot now, but let that pass.)

This rate of progress shows I’m back in the groove – two rows a night, more at weekends. This means an hour a night, give or take, and I usually knit while listening to music or an audiobook; if I try to knit this sort of pattern while watching TV I make mistakes. But as the old saying goes, many drops wear away the stone; it’s surprising how the rows mount up.

It was my birthday on Sunday (I’m 55, but requesting time off for good behaviour) and it snowed.  Snowed. We drove out to Staxigoe harbour and all it needed was an iceberg or two and some penguins for David Attenborough to cover the Arctic section of his next series without having to renew his passport. (I thought I saw a polar bear but it turned out to be a pensioner in a fur coat; luckily for her I’d forgot my harpoon.)

More proof, if any were needed, that I’ve been assigned Laurel and Hardy as my guardian angels. My optician called me in last week for peripheral vision tests, as he’s concerned I might have glaucoma. Over lunch I got something in my eye, and reached for a cotton bud and some of Margaret’s contact lens saline solution to rinse it with; except, and you’ll laugh when you read this, with my eye watering and my vision blurred I took down her acid cleaning solution instead. Then I scrupulously rinsed the bud with it and proceeded to swab out my eye.

Staxigoe

After I’d finished pushing the boundaries of modern dance, hopping about the bathroom making a noise like a wet thumb on a hot kettle, I prised open my burning eyelids and peered inside. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen an eye that’s been rinsed in cleaning solution? Imagine Peter Lorre using a piece of beetroot as a contact lens for a joke, or the quivering, slimy horror inside a Dalek’s metal armour; a sort of pinky-red poached egg stared back at me.

I pass over the subsequent interview with the optician. Suffice it to say that the pain of having to confess what I’d done far exceeded that of the actual accident; and even the confirmation that I’m being referred to the hospital for further tests pales in comparison. In fact, if you open a window and listen carefully, you can probably still hear him laughing…

Finally this week, Judit has sent me a brilliant link https://www.patternfish.com/patterns/20898-provenance-knits-whitby-warmers which I won’t spoil for you – you’ll have to click it and see.

And in other parish news, Nigel has sent pictures of his completed Flamborough gansey. It’s a really effective combination of cables, moss and diamonds, and warmest congratulations to Nigel – it’s excellent.

Well, what a difference a few days can make! We spent the week before Easter at my parents’ house in the Midlands: the main Wick-Northampton superhighway passes through the Cairngorms, and on the way down we had about a hundred miles of snow to contend with in temperatures of -1ºC. (Just past Inverness we ran into something of a blizzard, crawling along at about 20 mph with fat snowflakes smacking into the windshield like a ghostly flock of kamikaze sparrows.)

But when we came back just five days later the weather had broken and it was 20º, and we breezed through the Highlands in our shirtsleeves with the windows open, watching the buzzards wheeling against clear blue skies high above the forests, holding out our hands to let butterflies alight on them, that kind of thing. Temperatures got so warm that for a time we had to tape together two of our Caithness thermometers just to find out how hot it was.

It’s all changed back again now, and there’s a sharp north wind with rain spattering the window as I type, but change is definitely in the air; it may still feel like winter, but it looks like spring. And who knows—short-sleeved shirts may once again be part of my life. (If my toes didn’t resemble rheumatic parsnips I’d even consider dusting off the old sandals, but out of respect for my fellow men I’ll hold off for now.)

A new season, a new project: this time, it’s a traditional Flamborough gansey in Frangipani Claret yarn. I’ve always found the patterns of the north-east of England to be among the very finest, a perfect combination of aesthetics and function. And after all the fine detail of the Wick gansey, I wanted to knit something simple—where I didn’t have to study the chart every three minutes—and, of course, it was time for another pattern with cables.

The body consists of 364 stitches, and the pattern alternates diamond panels with moss stitch and cables. (I’ll hopefully post a pattern chart next week, but—get me—I haven’t actually drawn one up yet; that’s how easy it is!)

Finally this week, Judit’s been busy again, with a jumper that cleverly uses old yarn in coloured pattern bands. As she says, ”The colours are those of the sky, blue with white and gray clouds. I put a little flower on it, just a sign of spring.” It’s a very effective combination, with something of a nautical air about it, too—and, of course, perfect for the changing of the seasons…