Gansey Nation

So there we are, the centre strap is finished, the herringbone picked clean as the cat’s dinner, all two and a half inches of it. Next week, it will be on to the yoke. Meanwhile, I’ve made a start on the underarm gussets, increasing at my usual rate of 2 stitches every four rows.

I was down in Edinburgh at the start of last week (I’m on the board of my professional association, and once a year they take pity on me and meet in Scotland, though Wick is still 250 miles north of Edinburgh). The city was heaving because Scotland were playing New Zealand at rugby—Scotland got thumped, so as an undercover Kiwi I decided it was prudent to keep my head down on the airport bus and not perform a celebratory haka.

We stayed in The Scotsman hotel, just round the corner from Waverley rail station on North Bridge. It’s the old Scotsman newspaper building, all wood panelling and columns and marble, and is really rather swish (I spent one evening fending off chambermaids desperate to turn down the bedspread, and once while one kept me talking at the door another slipped in and folded the toilet paper into what looked like origami cranes so sharp I almost cut my—well, I almost cut myself). The breakfast menu ran to two pages, and when I said I only wanted toast and coffee the disbelieving waiter went off sobbing and had to be consoled by the concierge.

Edinburgh Airport: The departure lounge for Wick

I always lose my bearings in hotels. (Perhaps like migrating geese I need the sun to navigate? But then I get lost outdoors as well, so perhaps not.) The reception staff got so used to seeing me walking past the front desk every ten minutes or so, that by Tuesday morning they’d stopped asking if I needed help and just took me by the arm, gently spun me round, and propelled me in the right direction with a shove between the shoulder blades. Personally, I think it was a hotel built on the same principles as Hogwarts and the stairs rearranged themselves every night.

It was great being back in Edinburgh—the crowds, the bustle, the coffee shops, the homeless beggars, the roadworks. I went on a mission to try to find an iPad Mini, but everywhere had sold out, no more expected till the end of the month. Sales staff had the harassed look of aid officials in an African township, fending off desperate consumers with machine guns fired in the air. I got to play with a demo model at the airport but the assistant asked me to put it down; he said my drool was damaging the finish.

Speaking of drool, I’ve been slowly recovering my pancake mojo, inspired by the need to use up leftover bananas each weekend. There’s something about the acid combination of lemon juice blended with the rich flavour of ripe bananas and the double-shotgun-sweetness-blast of maple syrup that is the taste equivalent of jumping into the ocean on New Year’s Day: potentially fatal, but invigorating. (Thing is, I’m just not sure my left arm’s supposed to feel numb like this…)

Another nifty idea for using up leftover gansey wool from Judit this week (it’s an open question which will run out first—the ideas or the wool!). It’s a very spiffy collar, which you can find over on Judit’s gallery page.

So now I have to sit down, get out the calculator and plan out the yoke—horizontally and vertically. I’ve been toying with a gansey app for iPads and cell phones, and I think what it needs is the functionality to adapt any pattern (a tree, a chevron) or combination of patterns to the number of stitches you need. So you pick which patterns you want to incorporate and it automatically resizes them for you.

Meanwhile, however…

First of all, to everyone who has been affected by Hurricane Sandy—our commiserations to you, and hope things return to normal soon.

So that’s Halloween been and gone, and no trick-or-treaters made it as far as the front door (remember folks, an alligator pit really does pay for itself).

Now, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m slowly losing my sight—again— everything’s out of focus, I struggle to read print, and driving is becoming more exciting than my passengers and other road users would prefer. It’s really not serious, though: the condition’s called posterior capsule opacification, and a simple laser zap can fix it.

But it’s now bad enough that I went to my optician to persuade him that I deserve the operation. The consultation didn’t take long:

‘Can you read the top line for me?’
‘Er … is that an A?’
‘Very good, now the second line?’
‘There’s a second line?’
‘Ah.’

He directed an incredibly bright light, the kind they use in lighthouses or anti-aircraft batteries, into my skull, lighting it up like a Halloween pumpkin. It was so like being exposed to radiation I expected to emerge with a superpower. The good news is, he’s going to write to my doctor and kick-start the process. The bad news, it could take several months. In the meantime every car journey is a rich and exciting voyage of discovery. (Drivers in Caithness, be warned.)

I can still see well enough to knit, for the time being at least. I’m just coming to the end of the third diamond and the whole thing measures just under 14 inches so far. Another diamond would take it over 18 inches, which would be too long, so I’m going to resort to my fall-back position—tune in next week for details.

A couple of additions to the gallery for your interest this week. Judit has sent me this fun idea for using up leftover gansey wool, which is not only practical but also unbelievably cute. And David has sent me this picture of a gansey he machine-knit using one of my favourite patterns, Mrs Laidlaw’s from Seahouses. I’ve never tried machine knitting—I steer clear of all machinery after my Dad told me about the time in New Zealand when a man came into the shop with his fingers in a dripping handkerchief after an accident with a bacon slicer—but if they can produce results like this, I’m willing to be converted. Thanks to David and Judit for sharing these.

Also in parish notices, the Dover reprint of Michael Pearson’s Traditional Knitting is now out in the UK. Takes a few weeks to arrive, but as this is one of the books about ganseys I regard as essential, I urge you to place your order. It would be rude not to.

And finally, speaking of books, thanks to everyone who downloaded my novel “Wraiths of Elfael” last week. I’ve just started rewriting the sequel, so don’t worry when you get to the cliffhanger finale—you will get closure, I promise. (Well I say closure…)

So there we are. At least now that Halloween’s out of the way there’s just all this leftover chocolate to dispose of… OK, maybe enough chocolate for 30 kids may’ve been excessive in retrospect, but you’ve got to be prepared, right? (Type 2 diabetes, doctor? Never heard of it!)

Some parts of the world at this time of year enjoy an indian summer, a few weeks of warm, bright, summer-like weather. Caithness has just enjoyed an indian weekend—well, more of an indian Sunday, actually—in which the temperature soared to a giddy 12 degrees and the wind dropped to what was almost a gentle breeze. (Warm enough to shed at least one layer of thermal long johns—maybe even two.)

So we went to the castle of Old Wick, just a mile or so south of the town. You drive along the narrow clifftop road, but have to leave the car about 800 yards distant and walk the rest of the way across waterlogged fields (imagine the Dead Marshes in the Lord of the Rings, but instead of walking over the bodies of fallen warriors from bygone wars, here you have cowpats).

I’d seen pictures of the castle remains—just a ruined square tower, jutting up like a broken tooth, not very impressive—but I wasn’t prepared for the location. That part of the coast consists of a series of narrow inlets (or “goes” as they’re called up here, as in Whaligoe), and in between each is a narrow, sheer-sided promontory of rock jutting out into the ocean. Wick castle is perched on one of those promontories. (Lie your hand flat, palm-down on the table; now splay your fingers—the castle lies on your middle finger, and all the space from your first knuckle to the tip of your fingernail was taken up with buildings, a courtyard and a keep.) It’s really stunning.

It’s very old—one of the oldest in Scotland, dating back to the 1100s. Standing there, looking out over the limitless, empty ocean, waves breaking on the rocks far below like spouting whales, it’s hard not to imagine what it must have been like for the men and women who lived there on the edge of the world almost a thousand years ago. And I can’t help wondering how many men they lost in the early morning darkness as they stumbled out of bed and went to relieve themselves over the cliff edge—a fumble of clothing, a bleary misjudgement, a missed step and a long, fading, plummeting scream… (This, of course, is the reason indoor plumbing was invented.)

Another milestone on the gansey as I’ve finished the second diamond, and my zig, having zagged, is now starting to zig again (following the pattern as it moves up the body is a bit like watching a 1980s pingpong video game). I shall probably end up with four diamonds comprising my body pattern, but we’ll have to see. The pattern is starting to show up properly, now you can see the repeats. And it’s getting too tall to support its own weight, but quivers unsteadily like a fat man balancing on a chair to change a lightbulb.

Finally, a note to say that I’m publishing my third novel on Amazon kindle this week, the first part of my Welsh fantasy trilogy, The Wraiths of Elfael (which some of you may have already read when I offered it as a free download a year or so ago). It will retail for the exorbitant sum of 99 cents, but if you wait till next week it’ll be available on a free promotion from Amazon from 29-31 October.

It’s a snowbound, frozen chiller of a book set around Christmastime, which is why I thought I’d publish it now—except, of course, we’re enjoying this mild autumnal weather right now, which rather spoils the effect. So, if you do decide to read it, I suggest you take a bag of frozen peas from the freezer and stick it down the back of your neck to get you in the proper mood…