Gansey Nation

You know sometimes you feel like you shouldn’t have got out of bed? Well, I’m starting to think I shouldn’t get into bed in the first place. Thanks for the sympathy and suggestions over the pulled muscle in my neck last week. I was all set to write about how it was finally better now—but I had a relapse last night, so it’s back to sciatica of the neck. I have all the mobility of Batman in his body armour, and every movement is so slow it feels like the rest of the world is on time lapse.

It really wasn’t my weekend. How frustrating is this? Harper Collins, the publishers, having seen the success of Amazon’s kindle self-publishing boom, have just held an open call for unpublished fantasy manuscripts that they can publish as e-books. (It’s a bit of a cheat, really—you don’t get an advance, just royalties on copies sold, like Amazon, so in fact it’s basically self-publishing under the Harper Collins brand; but since you benefit from their marketing and promotion, it’s still definitely worth having a go.)

The window for submissions was advertised as being from the 1st to 14th October. So I’ve been beavering away, getting a couple of manuscripts ready, writing synopses, and “query letters”. Today—Sunday the 14th—I went to upload them, only to find that Harper Collins had closed the website at midnight on the 13th.

I can’t really complain—it was ambiguous, and anyway my teachers always told me that my habit of leaving everything to the last minute would come back to bite me—but all the same I can’t help feeling a shade dischuffed. (As the guy from Airplane almost said, looks like I picked the wrong year to give up chocolate!)

So it’s only going to be a short blog this week, partly because of all that wasted effort, and also because Margaret’s off on her travels again, to London and Edinburgh, and I have to figure out how to work the blog controls again. (Apologies for the ropey photos this week, too—it’s just me and my trusty iPhone, I’m afraid—and you’ll have to wait till Margaret’s back midweek before you’ll be able to click on the photos to enlarge them.)

I’m another couple of inches further on with the gansey. I know it looks like I’m knitting a “top hat cosy” (I should have gone into design, all these brilliant ideas), but you can see the pattern starting to emerge properly now. I had been concerned that the zigzag might disappear into the background, or be too thin, but it stands out quite distinctly. (Remember, this pattern section will only go as far up the body as the underarm gussets.)

Rainbow over Wick

At least I’ve found a way to knit which doesn’t involve too much discomfort in my neck, though it does involve a sort of slumped posture rather like the Hunchback of Notre Dame lining up a tricky shot at pool, or a crash test dummy. (And anyway, since I keep doing the damage yawning in my sleep I’ve decided I need more interesting dreams…)

OK, let’s start with the new title at the top of of the site. You see, when I started the blog all those years ago it didn’t seem worth giving it a fancy title–after all, it was just me wittering away into the ether, like the survivor of a post-nuclear apocalypse with a ham radio set, broadcasting from the ruins of a collapsed civilisation in the hopes of finding other survivors, but with little hope of ever getting an answer. (And with a pesky mutant problem, too.) And then, as more and more of us gradually came together, if not enough to rebuild civilisation then certainly enough for a cricket team (the two are really synonymous, of course), I was more or less stuck with “Ganseys.com” by default.

So why change it to “Gansey Nation”? Well, I like it because it describes what it feels like on this side of the keyboard, with so many people contributing and sharing their own projects—with the blog not just set to broadcast, but also to receive—that it genuinely feels to Margaret and me like a supportive interactive community. And with so many readers now we are, well, if not a nation (though we could kit out our navy in pretty snazzy jumpers if we were), certainly more than a cricket team.

Here, as promised, is the pattern chart for the body of the current gansey. It’s based on Hebridean patterns from Michael Green’s and Rae Compton’s books. Now, it seems to me that the body should be textured, with interesting patterns, but not so spectacular as to overshadow the yoke (which is going to be a different set of patterns and will, I hope, be appropriately spectacular).

So I have divided the body into seven panels on each side, front and back; and each panel is 25 stitches wide. The panels are divided by little 2-stitch cables, each flanked on either side with 2 purl stitches, cabling every sixth row. I’ve never done a cable narrower than 6 stitches before, and I really like the effect—they remind me of those thin stone columns in medieval Gothic cathedrals, arching up to heaven, and it makes me feel like I’m knitting a miniature cathedral in wool.

The panels alternate a zigzag with moss-stitch diamonds. The diamonds will probably in turn alternate closed and open diamond patterns as they ascend the body, separated by two rows of purl stitches, while the zigzag will wend its serpentine way alongside. (This way, if the wearer ever gets bored on long car journeys, she can amuse herself by playing snakes and ladders on the pattern.) Like other Hebridean ganseys, the body patterns will extend as far as the armpits/gussets, when there will be a central panel, probably of a trellis, topped by the yoke.

I’m still a little bemused by the garter stitch welt, which doesn’t behave itself nearly as well as the standard ribbing, but jumps up inappropriately like an over-excited puppy expecting a treat (“Down, Rascal!”). And there are times when it balloons out like a skirt, and it feels like I’m knitting a scale replica of a hovercraft. Still, no doubt it will all sort itself out once it’s been housetrained.

It’s been a wild week here in Caithness, gale force winds and driving rain (though today is gorgeous—blue skies, warm and no wind at all). We went for a scenic drive on Saturday to Dunnet beach, took a short cut and got lost (no road signs; where do they think this is, America?). The beach was deserted, wave after wave pounding the shore, spray whipped away by the wind. We went up to the viewing platform, but after ricocheting around like balls in a pinball machine for a minute decided enough was enough and retreated back to the car and amused ourselves watching unwary seagulls shooting backwards across the sky like clay pigeons.

So there we are. Welcome to Gansey Nation. I hope you like it. And remember, at least this is one nation that doesn’t require you to pay taxes…

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.