Gansey Nation

After all the excitement of last week’s Escape From The Doctors Of Doom, this time it’s the rather more staid Tale of Two Museums.

The first is the Wick Heritage Museum, here in town. I understand that, although they have a collection of those miniature samplers of patterns, they don’t have any actual ganseys. So I thought I’d knit them one, especially since their museum is bursting with stuff relating to the fishing industry. (Wick was the greatest herring port in the country a century ago; it was even known as “herringopolis” – which sounds like a classic German silent film of the 1920s, about a mad scientist planning to overthrow capitalism by means of an army of robot fish.)

Anyway, I plan to knit them a classic Wick pattern from Rae Compton’s book co-written with Henrietta (Hetty) Munro of Thurso, “They Lived By The Sea” (1983). It’s a plain body with a yoked pattern, but I’ll say more about the pattern when I get to it in due course.

In the meantime, I’ve cast on 380 stitches in Frangipani Navy yarn, knitted a welt of 3 inches, and then increased by 20 to 400 stitches for the body. Now it’s just a question of clocking up the rows until I reach the gussets and the yoke.

The other museum is the Scottish Fisheries Museum in Anstruther, Fife. You may remember me talking about it last year when their educational fishing boat The Reaper came up for the Wick Harbour Festival and I met the skipper, Ian Murray: he mentioned in passing that they were always on the lookout for ganseys for the crew, so I decided to knit them one.

Well, I finally got round to sending them a couple of ganseys a few weeks ago: the Filey seaspray gansey which I had made with them in mind, and the navy gansey based on Mrs Laidler of Whitby‘s pattern, which was languishing in a drawer at home.

Ian Murray, Joan Paton, Coull Deas

Anyway, I got back a handsome acknowledgement and some splendid photographs of the ganseys being modelled, a couple of which are included here. Pictured are Joan Paton, Vice Chair of the Scottish Fisheries Museum Boats Club; Ian Murray, retired skipper; and Coull Deas MBE, and I’m very grateful to them for sending me the photographs.

So, there we are, another week survived – 90 mph winds, blizzards and sub-freezing temperatures, as well as medical concern over my imminent demise notwithstanding. Perhaps to avoid awkward misunderstandings in future, like Terry Pratchett’s Granny Weatherwax, I should just attach a note to my identity card at work, saying, “I Aten’t Dead…”

  Well, we had our first touch of winter this week with a dusting of overnight snow to go along with the frost and ice. This has prompted me to wrap myself in several layers of clothing—base layers, flannel shirts, jumpers and a Cossack hat—so that if ever I fall over I bounce gently for a time like a man encased in bubble wrap, and if I end up on my back I can only wiggle my arms and legs feebly like a tortoise until someone comes along.

We’ve also dug out the winter duvet, which is so heavy it’s like sleeping under a dead bear. Getting out of the warmth of a cosy bed is like leaving the hearth of a Scandinavian sauna and running naked through the snow, albeit without the thrashing with birch twigs part—though I believe you can pay extra for that if you so wish.

There’s still nearly a month to go till the shortest day, and already the sun isn’t rising till 08.20, and setting at 15.35. Daylight is becoming something you read about in books, a precious commodity like money that you have to spend carefully and make last all week, and not waste.

I finished the claret gansey on Sunday—the cuffs cast off and all the ends darned in—and all that remains is the washing and blocking. Three months is all it took, which is a record for me, though this was a little smaller than the ones I usually knit. Now it’s time to think about the next project. It’s going to be another one for a museum, but I’ll say more about that next week.

As for the pattern, well, in the same way that every life can be measured in a number of heartbeats, so my knitting life can be measured in the number of ganseys I’m going to knit. A few years back I identified the patterns that I liked, and which I wanted to try, from all around the country. And, while I’m in no danger of running out just yet, the list is definitely growing shorter.

Anyway, now I’m up in the far north of Scotland I thought I’d turn my attention to Scottish ganseys. Seeing as how I’m in Wick, sometime capital of the herring fishing industry in Britain (even earning the name of “herringopolis”), I thought it was about time I knit a Wick gansey from one of the old photographs. Again, I’ll say more about this next week.

Till then we wish you all a happy Thanksgiving, on the grounds that even those of us not living in the USA still have plenty to be thankful for, such as the knowledge that spring is only 4-5 months away, or, if you live in Caithness, 7…

I was going to post something about Halloween this week, but since there were no fireworks, and no trick-or-treaters round our way (unless you count my windscreen wipers dying—but that’s more of an Act of God, and I prefer not to think of God as the sort of deity who plays pranks on non-believers if you don’t give Him chocolate), it was all a bit of an anticlimax.

So instead I shall talk about the two cats next door, Smokey and Gigi, both of them Black Ops cats, trained in stealth and the arts of surveillance. Now that the nights are drawing in they stalk me up the garden path in the darkness like sharks shadowing a boat, then try to slip in between my legs to get inside the house. Their expressions of baffled rage when they discover we have an inner door is better than a play, and the cat-shaped dents their heads leave in the woodwork make for an interesting conversation piece.

Smoky

Smokey is the good time girl, who in daylight trots along in front of you just out of reach, frequently stopping and looking back over her shoulder like a feline Betty Grable, as if to say, ‘How about it, big boy?’ She drools excessively when stroked (something else she has in common with some actresses), so that sometimes during a hosepipe ban all you have to do is hold her upside down over the plants and tickle her tummy.

Gigi is a tougher proposition entirely. She usually sits on the wall, looking cold and proud, like Judi Dench discovering she’s been mistakenly booked for a stag night. The one time I made the mistake of patting her on the head my hand was engulfed in a furious ball of whirling claws of teeth, not unlike putting one’s fingers in a blender. I couldn’t shake her off, and for a time had visions of her eating her way up my arm to the elbow, like a cartoon piranha. Eventually she just let go and ran off, snickering like Muttley, while I tried to staunch the bleeding.

Black Ops Cat, or, A Catsicle

Even with bandaged fingers, somewhat to my surprise I’ve almost finished the gansey’s first sleeve: I really must knit more ganseys for petite individuals. I decided to include one tree at the top of the sleeve, and made a border from the same purl half-diamond that acts as a border to the tree pattern, but this time running horizontally round the sleeve, so it’s broader and shallower. Just the cuff to go, and the next sleeve, so I might even finish this one by Christmas.

Gus models the latest in cat hoodies. Made with doubled sock yarn.

In parish notices, I’ve received some splendid pictures which, now that Margaret is back from her holidays, I can finally share—apologies to those concerned for the delay. The first is from David Scholes, of a Staithes gansey in a sort of Lincoln green, which you can see here. The other is a cream Robin Hood’s Bay gansey from the indefatigable Judit, which you can see on her gallery page, here. Both look just the thing for the winter that seems to be in store.

Finally, Lindsey posed an interesting question on the Suppliers page, about modern gansey yarn versus the traditional kind. If you have any thoughts, please feel free to join the discussion.

Oh, and speaking of cats, Margaret’s been knitting winter coats for Faith’s hairless cat Gus, to help keep him warm and help make him look marginally less like the sort of cat the creature from Alien might keep as a pet; well, a girl can dream…