Gansey Nation

Flamborough (John Knaggs) 8: 12 October

CCC = 300 in Roman numerals

Well now, here’s a milestone: this will be my 300th post on this blog. It’s time to get misty-eyed, nostalgic and sentimental, and also to spare a moment to wonder how on earth we got here; as Winston Churchill might have said, never in the field of human conflict has so much been written by one person for so many about so few (jumpers).

Margaret and I started the blog back in 2008, when we lived in Somerset. Since then I lost my job; got a new one and relocated to Edinburgh; resigned from it after a year (working for archivists—what was I thinking?); spent 18 months unemployed, flirting with novel writing, bread making and despair; and finally found a job as the Caithness archivist three years ago this week and moved to Wick.

And all of these events have been mapped out, one gansey at a time, on this blog. In short, it’s been an eventful few years, but hopefully the worst is now behind us; one day I may even be able to go to sleep with the lights off.

I’ve been pushing hard to finish the John Knaggs gansey, putting in double-shifts and spending a couple of hours a night beavering away. It’s paid off, as I’ve managed to complete the second sleeve as far as the cuff; all that remains is the small matter of six inches of ribbing and we’re home and dry…

… or as dry as the Caithness weather allows. We had one of those storms last week, high tides combined with gale force winds blowing the waves inland, flooding parts of the harbour, washing over the lighthouse and exploding against the rocks in the bay, the wind whipping the spray in your face like salt rain. And yet today it’s settled down to crisp, clear, frosty, still, beautiful autumn weather. Go figure.

A couple of parish notices. First of all, many thanks to Jai for letting me know that Gladys Thompson’s Patterns for Guernseys, Jerseys & Arans: Fishermen’s Sweaters from the British Isles is now available in a kindle edition, and is currently for sale at half price, in the UK at least. (I downloaded a copy; it’s come across pretty well, though not all the photos are as good as the print version.)

Secondly, please take a moment to look at Serena’s blog for English Heritage on drowned fishermen being identified by their ganseys. If you have any comments or observations, please let Serena know.

And so, here we are. I still can’t quite believe we’ve reached 300 posts; I can imagine an uncomfortable interview ahead with the Recording Angel outside the pearly gates, as he consults his ledger and looks up at me thoughtfully and says, ‘You spent your life doing what…?’

Ah, well. A couple of weeks ago I quoted some lines from Bob Dylan’s classic song ‘Mississippi’. It seems appropriate to end on a couple more:

‘But my heart is not weary, it’s light and it’s free,
I’ve got nothing but affection for all those who sailed with me…’

Flamborough (John Knaggs) 7: 5 October

The Rollright Stones are a collection of Stone Age/Bronze Age stones down by the Oxfordshire-Warwickshire border, just over an hour’s drive from my parents’ house where we were staying last week. And if that wasn’t cool enough, they even have their own legend.

The King’s Men

In fact the Rollrights consist of three discrete monuments. In a field next to the road lie the King’s Men, a circle of 77 stones; four hundred metres east of these sits a smaller heap known as the Whispering Knights, as if someone had been trying to build a card house out of stones (the remains of an ancient burial chamber); and in a separate field on the other side of the road lies a single solitary monolith, the King Stone.

These stones were part of my growing up, my country’s own ancient monument; and while away south Stonehenge sold herself in tawdry burlesque shows for tourist dollars, the Rollrights rested in quiet seclusion, much as they’d done for thousands of years, our little secret, enigmatic, English and mysterious.

The Whispering Knights

Of course it couldn’t last: revisiting them last week after a decade or more we found a warden in attendance, brochures, dog walkers, tourists, chatter, even the local astronomy club sitting in a row, telescopes pointed at the clouds, their backs to the stones. It seems a pity—but still, when the people have all gone home, the stones remain; quietly giving the landscape meaning.

But what, you ask, about the legend? Well, actually there are two: the first, which we’ve already disproved, is that you can never count them and get the same number twice. The other is that they are an ancient king and his followers turned to stone by a witch. The best thing about this is her curse:

‘Rise up stick and stand still stone, For King of England thou shalt be none;
Thou and thy men hoar stones shall be, And I myself an elder tree!’

Isn’t the language great? You can see where Tolkien got a lot of his folk idiom from. I also like the fact that she curses herself at the same time, and like to think that her last words, as her arms turned to branches and her feet took root in the earth, were, ‘Oh, bugger!’

The Hill o’ Many Stanes

I took a break from knitting while we were away, but having had a few days to recover from the jetlag of driving 600 miles in a day I’ve made rapid progress, and have almost finished the first sleeve—always assuming I don’t have to rip these ones out and re-do them, like last time. (I’m also trying to get as much done as possible before the clocks go back and it’s too dark for navy yarn.) I picked up 110 stitches around the armholes and decreased at two stitches every fourth row.

Now we’re back I can appreciate the loneliness of the Caithness landscape. The ancient monuments up here may be less dramatic—the Hill o’Many Stanes is more like a Stone Age rockery than a ceremonial relic—but they’re every bit as ancient and mysterious. And if the British landscape is a palimpsest in which different cultures have written their own history, it’s nice to have some peace and quiet in which to read it.

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Apologies for the late post – due to circumstances beyond our control (the site was moved to a new server) – we were unable to publish on time. Ed.

Flamborough (John Knaggs) 6: 28 September

I know I said I wasn’t going to do an entry this week, but as I’ve just finished the neck I thought I’d post this while we’re away in rural Northants (think of this as a ‘post restante’).

Now, my second-favourite Bob Dylan song is the sublime “Mississippi”, an amazing jumble of images about life and death, all delivered in the strangled croak of an elderly raven with laryngitis who’s decided to become a folk singer.

It’s full of wonderful lines that mean a lot to me (e.g., “Well, the emptiness is endless, cold as the clay/ You can always come back, but you can’t come back all the way”); and my favourites are “Walking through the leaves, falling from the trees/ Feeling like a stranger nobody sees”.

Arthur’s Seat, Salisbury Crags and the Pentlands from across the Firth

We’re into autumn now and this line plays in my mind every time I find myself scrunching through the fallen leaves down by the river (it doesn’t take long, of course, as there aren’t that many trees in Caithness).

Bearing that in mind, a curious thing happened to me the other day. I was strolling along the river when a woman who was walking her dog stopped me as I passed. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘I hope you don’t mind, but we see you walking here every day, and we were wondering who you were?’

Haws and lichen

Once I got over my surprise, it turned out that, far from being a stranger nobody sees, the good people of Wick had been noticing me all the time and, since I appeared to be a fixture, had decided it was time to place me. (I mentioned this to my colleague at work, a native herself, and she looked at me like I’d just discovered Santa wasn’t real. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘People ask about you all the time.’) Dog walkers. Who knew?

Meanwhile, I’ve emailed Dylan and suggested that in future he change the lyric to more of a Caithness vibe: “Walking through the leaf, falling from the tree/ Feeling like a stranger with zero anonymity…”

Still haven’t heard back, but I’m sure it’s just a matter of time.

See you next week!

Flamborough (John Knaggs) 5: 15 – 21 September

Thursday was the day of the referendum on whether Scotland should be independent of the United Kingdom, so on my way to work I stopped at the polling station in the old parish church of St Fergus and placed my cross in the box.

Shoulder detail

I’d woken up to television pictures of people queuing outside polling stations, reporters and cameras, campaigners, balloons, everything but elephants and a chorus line. So it was rather a surprise to get there at 8.30am and find the place deserted, not a soul inside or out apart from the two ladies handing out forms. Had it been busy at all, I asked? They looked at each other uncertainly. ‘Er… no, not really,’ one of them said. ‘Not as such, no,’ the other confirmed. (This counts as voting frenzy in Wick, I suspect.)

As it turned out, I needn’t have bothered—no one from the Highlands need have. There was a tragic accident that night at Berriedale, about 25 miles south of Wick, a lethal series of hairpin bends on cliffs overlooking the sea. As a result the main road was closed, so the ballot boxes had to be sent on a 90-mile detour before they could be counted. The Highland result was announced around 8.00am, but by then the No campaign had already achieved a majority, the Yes campaign had conceded and the Prime Minister was already finagling over the promises he’d made.

I don’t know if you followed the referendum at all, but all the national parties committed themselves at the last minute to guaranteeing Scotland more devolution and levels of funding, in hopes of shoring up the No vote. The BBC invited listeners to send in poems after the referendum and my favourite went something like:

Only in Britain could such things be done/ There were two options to chose from, and the third option won

—which seemed to sum it all up, rather.

Wick river bridge in fog

In gansey news, I’ve finished the front and the two shoulders, and joined them both. The next step will be the collar, and then—sigh—it’ll be time to pick up the stitches round the armhole of the first sleeve. I decreased a few stitches when I got to the rig ’n’ fur shoulder strap this time, as I’ve noticed that they can stretch a bit, especially on already large pullovers; so I reduced it by 5 stitches, which will hopefully keep things in better shape.

Spiderwebs in the railings

There’s an autumnal feel to the air just now, and the mornings are misty and moisty, just like in the old folk song. Spiders are everywhere. They’ve even been colonising the spaces between the railings outside the library where I work; one day I came out to find the webs all glistening with dewdrops and billowing in the breeze, as if the spiders had fashioned an armada of ghostly pirate ships with webs for sails. (Quite cool and more than a little creepy.)

There won’t be a blog next week, as we’re heading down south to visit my parents in Northamptonshire—no passports required, which is lucky as mine has expired. (If Scotland had voted for independence, sooner or later I’d have had to choose a nationality.)

The next post will be on Monday 6 October—see you then.

Flamborough (John Knaggs) 4: 8 – 14 September

September is harvest time here in Caithness, and the last few days have been gloriously warm and sunny—or at least, when it’s not been dank and foggy and cold—real harvest weather. The wheat’s been cut to stubble, the hay has been baled and the fields are scattered with dozens of tightly-packed cylindrical bales; and these are now gradually being encased in shiny black plastic to keep the rain out through the winter.

It’s a slightly creepy spectacle, to be honest—each bale in turn is hoisted onto the back of a tractor and slowly rotated and twisted an encased in a black cocoon, as though the tractor was a giant metal spider and the bale its paralysed prey (think of the scene in Lord of the Rings where Frodo is trussed by Shelob and you’ll get the picture). Someone should fill one with cheese, just for fun.

It was a still, mostly clear day on Saturday so we went up to John O’Groats and passed field after golden field of hay in the making, or grass drying in rows in the sun, with the sunlight shimmering on the sea beyond the cliffs. (I’m going to get a T-shirt printed, which I can wear and flaunt at tourists on days like this, that says, “It’s not normally like this”.)

The fog was drifting inland in patches, so you passed from sunshine into thick fog and out again from minute to minute; from the international space station it must have looked as though Caithness had been barcoded, and was on special offer.

Thanks to everyone for all the good wishes on my migraine and cold last week. For a few days there I felt as though my consciousness had been placed inside the body of a robot, one whose instruction manual was only available in Japanese and I couldn’t find the On switch. (It’s never good when you blow your nose and your handkerchief looks like an alien life form has just given birth in it.)

I’ve been doing a lot of knitting recently, but the illness slowed me down. Still, I’ve finished the back and done a standard “rig ’n’ fur” on each shoulder (12 rows, or 3 ribs consisting of two rows of purl and two rows of knit stitches). The armhole measures six inches, together with an inch of shoulder ribbing, giving a total of seven inches from the gusset to the top of the shoulder. I’m now embarked on the front, and if I’m lucky will get it finished next weekend.

Finally, I’ve had a query asking if there are any gansey patterns for two needle knitting? I don’t know of any, because this is all I do, but I was wondering if anyone out there had any suggestions where to look…?

Gansey Nation

Flamborough (John Knaggs) 8: 12 October

Flamborough (John Knaggs) 7: 5 October

Flamborough (John Knaggs) 6: 28 September

Flamborough (John Knaggs) 5: 15 – 21 September

Flamborough (John Knaggs) 4: 8 – 14 September

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