Gansey Nation

I wonder if I might trespass on your valuable time this week for a spot of shameless self-promotion on behalf of Caithness Archives?

You see, we’ve started an ambitious new web project, a blog, in which we’re going to tell the history of the county of Caithness throughout the Second World War in real time, week by week, using only original sources. These include archives such as diaries, police and Home Guard records of air raids and submarine sightings, council minutes, local newspapers and school log books. Now, given that the Second World War lasted some six years, we’re talking possibly three hundred weeks’ worth of entries to write – but hey, you’ve got to aim high, right?

The point is to show what daily life was really like for ordinary people. So we’ve already found out that the blackout was imposed even before Britain declared war on Germany; that lessons were disrupted because schoolchildren were distracted by planes flying overhead; that Wick’s fishing fleet was confined to harbour for the first weeks because of fear of U-boats; and a curfew was imposed on children. (We’ve also discovered that Wrigley’s chewing gum helps ease tension in times of stress – a claim that nowadays might get the truth in advertising people interested…)

Front and back of steek

Anyway, you can see the blog if you’re interested over at Caithness at War. It will be updated each Monday, just like this one.

So much for the Home Front – now for the Gansey Front; and of course Back. (By the way, did you know that the use of the word “front” for a military campaign only came in at the turn of the 19th century, borrowing the term from the new science of meteorology? Before then it was a “line”.)

Where was I? Oh, yes. I have finished the welt, just over two inches of garter stitch knitted in the round, with the usual fake seams. I’ve now embarked on the one inch of plain knitting before the pattern starts (I’ll chart out the body pattern in next week’s blog.) The steek is becoming clearly visible, 18 stitches of stockinette with a purl stitch delineator on either side. I like the curve of this kind of welt. It reminds me of the way each stage of a Saturn V rocket bulges out from the one above. In fact I am now inspired to develop and patent the world’s first Saturn V gansey costume for children, worn head to toe; the only downside being it would resemble a giant novelty condom, with perhaps unfortunate misunderstandings and lawsuits to follow.

As I mentioned in the comments last week, the problem with so much purling was that it highlighted a flaw in my technique – so my right index finger kept catching my left thumbnail. Not that each contact was especially painful in itself – rather, the cumulative effect was unpleasant, like the water torture, drop by drop.

Right. Back to work to research another week of Caithness At War. Right now things look black for our heroes – I do hope it has a happy ending.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen The Avengers? I don’t mean the movie of the Marvel superhero-ey comics, but the classic black-and-white suave British comedy spy series from the 1960s, the one that made a star of the divine Diana Rigg.

It’s bursting at the seams with sixties weirdo chic, yet it’s all done with a very British stiff upper lip (I’d like to see Gibbs from NCIS take time out to hand over change to pay the waiting taxi driver—with tip—while engaged in a desperate hand-to-hand brawl). Along with Doctor Who, its strangeness freaked me out when I was a kid, the way it would take the familiar and make it unsettling and disturbing (anyone who’s read my books might see a trend here).

Anyway, we’ve been watching the best season, number 4. There’s a great episode called “The Girl From Auntie”, in which a series of murders are committed by a contract killer, who happens to be a little old lady using Double-O knitting needles. The hero tracks the needles to a knitting class, Arkwright’s Knitting Circle, in which the ever-superb Bernard Cribbins teaches knitting by reciting instructions like the caller in a barn dance. It’s quite splendid, absurd and innocent (on the surface, at least)—and while knitting is gently teased in the process, it’s affectionately done, without mockery. What we gain and what we lose.

. . . and a more nautical setting. That’s the Isabella Fortuna in the background

The red Filey gansey is now blocked and ready to be shipped to my friend down in Edinburgh. As ever, I am now consumed by anxiety that it won’t fit him, or that even though it matches the dimensions of his favourite sweater it’ll be the wrong shape, or something. You know. Blocking was quite a challenge, as the number of cables pulled the body in more than I’d expected.

I’ve cast on the stitches for the next project, but only just, as and when I felt like it, so no photographs just yet. The welt is going to be a little different from my usual style, as it’s going to be knit in garter stitch instead of ribbing, but in the round, not with a split up the sides. This may have something to do with my cautious start! It’s going to be another cardigan, putting the eek in steek as I like to say, so that has to be factored into the stitch count as well. More on this next week.

Finally, how dumb is television these days? Not all of it, of course, since there are still plenty of documentaries on quantum physics to keep me in my place, but still. We watched a BBC programme on seabirds around the coast of Britain. It had two highlights for me. The first was the presenter asking a ranger, after he’d been told that the number of nesting birds in one area had gone from 50,000-odd to 65,000, “So are the numbers increasing, then?”.

The second was the following brain teaser he set us, the viewing public: “So just why do these creatures of the sea come inland to breed?”

Sometimes, you know, I really miss the sixties…

I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced a rock festival at the bottom of your garden? It’s years since I went to one, so Allah, in an obvious Mohammed-mountain parallel, decided to bring one to me.

Wick hosted the B-fest festival this weekend, Friday night and all day Saturday, down by the river, just half a mile from our front door. It was like being shelled by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s heavy artillery division.

The main stage, before the festival

By some oversight the sun was shining on Saturday, no need for anti-rickets medication this weekend, so we decided to slip away to recover our hearing and stare at some scenery. This involved a trip along the coast to Strathy Point, a little peninsula jutting out into the North Sea, an hour’s drive over the border into Sutherland. Strathy is a crofting township, scattered bungalows and ruined stone huts, and you can see a remnant of an ancient way of life in the pyramids of peat stacked out in the fields to dry like ancient stone cairns, contrasting strangely with the satellite dishes on the crofts themselves.

It’s a mile or so’s walk from the car park to the lighthouse, downhill through a rocky defile filled with sheep who watch you as you pass with the silent menace of inner city gang members, except that sheep mostly chew grass instead of gum, and drug-related crime among them is comparatively low. We sat on the grass at the end of the point, the sun on our backs, the ground curving away below us like the bows of a submarine, and watched gannets diving for fish out past the rocks—the whole restless North Sea laid out before us, nothing between us and the distant curve of the far horizon but a few weathered slabs of rock.

Looking north

Driving home with the windows open, breathing the scent of freshly-mown hay, it felt like summer, or rather, the coming to an end of a summer we never had. In a month it will be autumn; and the year will start to wind down like a top running out of spin. Schools go back in Scotland next week—summer’s over already, sorry guys.

Still, autumn is prime gansey weather. I’m sauntering down the sleeve, over half way now, taking my time and enjoying it. I reckon of my 13 balls of 100g Wendy wool I’ll have just under one ball left by the end. I hope my friend David, who the gansey’s for, has been keeping in shape. It feels as if it weighs as much as a deep-sea diver’s suit—he’ll think gravity’s been increased once he tries it on.

Thanks to everyone who downloaded copies of my novel The Bone Fire when it was on free promotion last week. Remember, if you should happen to read it—and enjoy it—a review on Amazon would mean a lot, and help the book enormously next time it’s on a promotion.

So there we are. The fun fair’s packed up, the rock festival is over, Margaret’s heading off on her travels again—it must be time for Ganseys.com to take its summer break. Just a short one this time—we’ll be back on 27 August, hopefully with a completed gansey to show. Till then—enjoy the summer—while it lasts…