Gansey Nation

Humber 12: 12 – 18 December

Have you ever had your blood pressure taken? The doctor (or nurse) tightly straps a broad cuff round your upper arm until the arm won’t bend, and then inflates it so that it squeezes even tighter, like a tourniquet, until the cuff feels as though it’s going to meet in the middle and your fingers are swelling up like something from a Popeye cartoon.

My heart always sinks when the medical profession asks me to roll up my sleeve, since it usually means either a needle or the blood pressure cuff (and nobody seems to offer you a lollipop afterwards, either!). So when the doctor suggested I try a 24-hour blood pressure monitor, I should have known better. But whether it was the cunning use of the word ‘monitor’ that threw me off my guard, or because the doctor was bigger and younger than I, and had any number of strong nurses to hand, I agreed.

Basically, I was fitted with a cuff and a heavy little box, connected by a tube which ran up my arm, over my shoulder and out my collar. I looked like a member of the Borg collective. For the next 24 hours, every quarter of an hour, the box gave a couple of warning bleeps, then started to vibrate with a noise like a drawbridge being raised, which never failed to turn heads in the public reading room; everyone would stop to watch, fascinated. Then the cuff inflated and squeezed, and my arm was paralysed in the position of the lead in a musical comedy preparing to sing – I looked like a malfunctioning Borg hit by phaser fire. I started to dread those (*bleeping*) bleeps.

Winter in the Highlands

During the night the rate dropped to one squeeze per hour, just enough to wake me with a jolt. I naturally sleep with my arm curled under my pillow, so sometimes the first I knew of it was when the pillow started to levitate off the bed as my arm straightened. Who knew nights could be so long?

Never mind. I’ve finished my second star, and I’m two-thirds up the back. (You can maybe get an idea of how it’s going to look from the pictures.) One point of note, the diamonds either side of the star require a bit of concentration – the way the pattern repeat works out, it’s an uneven number of rows, so every alternate filled diamond starts on either a front or a back row, and some are therefore out of sync with the rest of the patterns (the star, the mini-diamonds). As a bear of very little brain when it comes to this sort of thing it’s proved to be something of a trial! If I ever did the pattern again I think I’d add an extra row to the pattern so it always starts on an even (front) row, like the others.

Sunrise in Wick

Anyway, it’s nearly Christmas. This blog will be taking a break over the festive season, and will reappear on Monday 2 January 2012 (Hogmanay hangovers depending). Margaret and I would like to take this opportunity to wish all our readers a very happy Christmas, and all good wishes for the New Year. May all your knitting and craft projects be successful – and certainly do nothing to increase your blood pressure….

Finally, to paraphrase Charles Dickens in his preface to Bleak House: “I have purposely dwelt upon the romantic side of familiar things. I believe I have never had so many readers as in this blog. May we meet again!”

Humber 11: 5 – 11 December

I heard on the news that a team of explorers is currently recreating Captain Scott’s doomed journey to the South Pole; there was a point on Friday, as I stumbled through the blizzard at an angle of about 45 degrees, pellets of snow peppering my exposed cheeks like dried peas, feet slipping on the ice, and wondering whether the tracks I was following were those of a Pekinese or a polar bear, that it occurred to me that they could have saved themselves the trouble and just come to Caithness for Christmas.

We have, I am delighted to report, survived Scotland’s worst storm for over a decade, which struck on Thursday and lasted into Friday. Up in the mountains winds of 160 mph were recorded, but even at low levels winds of 70-100 mph weren’t unusual. Thurso’s Christmas tree blew over; Edinburgh had to close its German market; and (how cool is this?) a wind turbine actually caught fire.

Margaret was coming up to visit on Thursday, and what should have been a tedious but straightforward journey of some 8 hours from Edinburgh to Wick became an epic trek through snowy wastes, flooded roads and felled trees, and which lasted over 30 hours (fortunately with an overnight hotel stop – not an option for poor Captain Scott). At least our power didn’t go out, though it was touch and go for a while as the lights flickered like closing time in the pub.

Dunnet Bay

On the gansey front, hopefully you can see the yoke pattern beginning to emerge; it has a resolutely chunky feel after all that plain knitting on the body. I’m particularly taken with the central star – I’ve never tried this kind of pattern before, and it’s really rather striking. But of course you can’t go far wrong with a pattern that involves so many double cables.

I’ve divided for front and back, which explains the rapid progress this week. Knitting the body while increasing the gussets is like walking across a muddy field; gradually you slow down as your boots clog with mud and it takes more and more effort to move forward. (I stopped when the gusset was 23 stitches wide, but 46 extra stitches per row can really slow you down.) Now I’m just working the back I can do a row in about 15 minutes, so it feels like flying, plus I have the new pattern to engage my interest. I’ve also just started my second 500g cone of Frangipani yarn, and I’m delighted to have got so far with no ends to darn in later.

Sunrise and moonset

My only problem is that I forgot to bring up some differently-coloured yarn to use as stitch holders for the gussets. I could use some of the same yarn, but to be honest my eyesight is so bad that I’d never be able to get the stitches off again. So far the best I can come with is a strand of cooked spaghetti, but I accept that may not turn out to be the solution I’m hoping for.

Meanwhile we brace ourselves for more storms: they’re forecasting possibly 100 mph winds for Tuesday and Thursday, plus more snow. At the moment it’s a beautiful day, clear and sunny, all the snow melted; but it can change in an instant (last week I went into the supermarket to get some milk, and it was dry; when I came out there was a snowstorm and the ground was white). But I’m ready to do my duty. Next time I go out for an Indian takeaway my last words will be, like Captain Oates, “I’m going out. I may be some time…”

Humber 10: 28 November – 4 December

As you’ll see from the photos, I’ve managed quite a lot of knitting this last week. Partly this is down to being up here on my own still, partly down to the weather – for winter has finally come to Caithness and I’ve spent a lot of time indoors, huddled over the fire, listening to the hail rattling the windows. And not just hail – Sunday morning broke in snow; I opened the curtains to see a snowstorm sweeping horizontally towards me across the low fields, as if the ghosts from a thousand Lost Arks had been unleashed and the restless spirits had come to claim the citizens of Wick. (Come to think of it, maybe they have, for I haven’t been out today and it’s very quiet.)

Right. Time for the Big Reveal – the yoke. I’m following Mrs Jackson’s pattern from Michael Pearson’s book (p.102 in his 1984 edition), part of his chapter on keel and sloop patterns from the Humber Estuary.

We’ve had the moss stitch and chevrons up the seams; and last week I started the triangular patterns that lead into the yoke. Now the yoke proper is introduced by 3 purl rows, each 3 rows apart. The interesting thing about these purl rows is that they run the full width of the yoke; the moss and chevron patterns resume above them, but the purl rows slice right through the pattern. (I debated whether or not to let the moss and chevron panels continue uninterrupted up the yoke, and only have the purl rows delineate the centre, but decided in the end to stick with the pattern; and I’m glad I did, because it looks quite striking.)

Ready for some maths? The pattern calls for a centre star 25 stitches across; on either side of that is a double cable of 18 stitches (p2, k6, p2, k6, p2); a diamond panel of 13 stitches; and another double cable. This comes to 123 stitches (25 + 18 + 18 + 13 + 13 + 18 + 18). As the total number of stitches in the centre of my yoke was 142 (excluding the moss and chevron panels), this gave me 19 extra stitches to fill (142-123=19).

I could, I suppose, have increased the star and/or the diamond panels accordingly, but in the end I preferred to add a little 9-stitch diamond panel at each edge, and keep the original proportions. (This still gave me 1 extra stitch per side – serves me right for not working all this out months ago – but I cunningly “disappeared” it with a subtle decrease on one of the purl stitches flanking a double cable.)

Snow outside; it’s that time of the year when they start playing Christmas music on the radio, including Handel’s “Messiah”, which gives me the chance to wheel out my annual joke about “His yoke is easy, his burden is light” – but not this time. His yoke is bloomin’ complicated, and his burden requires rather more concentration than is conducive to watching NCIS on tv. I feel a “Bah! Humbug!” coming on – but after all, there’s only 20 more sleeps till Christmas…

Humber 9: 21 – 27 November

You may recall that I have had occasion – just now and then – to mention the wind up here in Caithness, strong enough to snatch an umbrella out of your hand and twist it into weird and disturbing shapes as easily as you might bend a paperclip, even on a normal autumn day. What did I know? Over the weekend I experienced a genuine Caithness gale.

I was woken up around 3 a.m. by the wind – well, I say wind, but that doesn’t adequately cover it: a gale was battering and shaking the house, pounding the double glazing and even squeezing puddles of water through. (I heard that winds around 80 mph were recorded in the Highlands in the night – I don’t know if this was as strong as that, but it can’t have been far off.) At one point I decided that as I was awake I’d turn on my bedside radio to take my mind off it all. After a couple of minutes I had to check it was actually on – the wind was so loud it drowned out the sound, for all the world like a 747 revving its engines prior to takeoff just outside my bedroom window. (Now I know what the Three Little Pigs must have felt like.)

Anyway, this is supposed to be a blog about knitting, so it is with some relief that I’m able to turn aside from the delights of Caithness meteorology to actually talk about knitting for a change, rather than the “cut and paste” of my slow progress up the body in recent weeks. For I have, at last – wonderful to relate – started the gussets and the yoke.

But before I get into that, I have a (gulp) shameful confession to make. You see, I’ve never knit a pattern like this before, with a patterned strip up the seams and the rest plain – the bodies of my ganseys have either been all plain, or all patterned. Now I’ve discovered a worrying flaw in my technique: after 10 inches of body, the plain central panel measures almost an inch longer than the patterned strips.

I wonder why this is? I thought I knit plain stitches tighter than patterns with lots of knits and purls – in fact, I know this is the case, from ganseys I’ve knitted before. Yet here the reverse is true. Have I been subconsciously knitting the seed stitch tighter to make sure it doesn’t end up as full of holes as a string vest? Have I been correspondingly relaxing in the plain stretches? Or is this merely an optical illusion, and it will all look the same once it’s washed and blocked?

I’d be interested to hear from the more experienced knitters out there, especially if this is a recognised phenomenon.

Anyway, back to the pattern. I’ve made a start on the gussets – just a few rows so far – increasing one stitch either side of the gusset every 4 rows (my standard rate of increase). It looks a bit ugly, as it always does at first, but it will settle down as it widens and grows.

Now, I’ve already hinted that this is an unusual sort of pattern. Not only does it have the patterned strips up the body seams, it has a sort of “pre-yoke”, triangular shapes that sit immediately below the start of the yoke proper, hanging like bats, or fat icicles from the start of the pattern. I don’t know if you can make them out from the photos – Margaret has fled back to the city lights of Edinburgh and taken her camera with her, so you’ll have to bear with me for a bit – but they’re about half done, so they sort of float in mid-air as if I was trying to knit a Space Invaders game pattern (now there’s a thought…).

I should finish them over the next few days, and then it’ll be time for the big reveal, the yoke pattern proper. Always assuming the big bad wolf hasn’t blown my house down in the meantime, of course…

Humber 8: 14 – 20 November

One evening in May towards the end of the 19th century, at around seven o’clock, the Sheriff Substitute of Wick (the deputy sheriff) was summoned to a druggist’s shop in Wick, where he found a young man lying injured on the floor. A couple of doctors were in attendance and they gave their opinion that the youth – a cooper who had just turned 17 a couple of months before – was losing so much blood from a wound in his neck he was unlikely to live.

The Sheriff Substitute advised the young man to make a statement while he still could and, from his position lying on the floor, he told them that he had been on the quay of Wick harbour earlier that evening when he saw a “chum” of his, a seaman, having an argument with the captain of a vessel tied up at the dock, and threatening the captain with an open knife “in a mad like way”. “I went to him and bade him to put up that knife and come ashore. [He] instantly turned on me saying “I’ll put it in you too” and with that he struck me a blow with the knife in the neck and wounded me as I now am.”

The statement was written down and read back to him, the unfortunate young man being too faint by then even to sign his name – and indeed, he died shortly afterwards. The killer, who was only aged 20, was arrested the same evening, and a year later was convicted of murder and sentenced to 10 years.

Bores of Duncansby

I came across this “dying deposition” in the archives of the local police force, and it made quite an impression on me – I mean, how often do you come across someone’s dying words? Curious, I looked up the case and found a record of the conviction, which also included a description of the killer (long face, fresh complexion, brown hair, no whiskers, long nose, thin cheeks, large mouth, grey eyes, able to write well). It’s hard not to be moved, the poor young man bleeding to death on the floor of the chemist’s shop, surrounded by strangers, struck down by his friend in a blind rage. Sometimes archives can bring the past a lot closer.

In gansey news, I’m about an inch and half away from starting the yoke and the gussets now, maybe another week’s knitting, depending. I’m close enough that I keep getting out the ruler and staring in disbelief at how little progress I’ve made since the previous measurement. But many drips wear away the stone, as the Welsh proverb has it. Time cures all ills.

Duncansby Stacks

By the way, remember how last week I mentioned John o’ Groats in an unflattering light? Well, I looked it up on Wikipedia and learned that the Lonely Planet guide describes it as a “seedy tourist trap” and in 2010 it was named “Scotland’s most dismal town” – so it’s not just me. Turns out the distance between John o’ Groats and Land’s End is the furthest distance between two inhabited settlements in Britain, but the actual north-east tip of Scotland is Duncansby Head, just a couple of miles further on.

You reach the Head down a narrow road which ends in a car park; there’s a lighthouse, and a pretty good view over the sea to Orkney. But if you cut through the fields, and walk to the south side of the promontory, you’re rewarded with sight of the celebrated Duncansby Stacks, jagged great rocks rising out of the ocean like filed and broken teeth, one of them forming a vast arch. On the day we went it had been raining steadily and the grass seemed to be floating on a lake – it’s the only time I’ve seen grass ripple, in a Grimpen Mire/Marshes of the Dead sort of way – so we didn’t explore too closely, for fear of being sucked below, or finding pale hands clutching at our ankles. We’ll go back next year, when the weather improves; I’m told it really does. Honest.

Gansey Nation

Humber 12: 12 – 18 December

Humber 11: 5 – 11 December

Humber 10: 28 November – 4 December

Humber 9: 21 – 27 November

Humber 8: 14 – 20 November

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