Gansey Nation

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.

Humber 7: 7 – 13 November

I once saw a documentary about X-rays and the way they travel invisibly through our bodies, which really creeped me out at the time – same as those subatomic particles barrelling through the helmets of astronauts and punching microscopic holes as they go. Well, I can now add a new category to all of these – Caithness wind, which I’ve discovered blows straight through my skull without being deterred by any headgear, exiting via the back, and leaving a chilled and shivering mass of shrunken brain behind.

The wind, I find, is the defining characteristic of Caithness, along with the grey skies and dark winter nights. Walking in a strong wind is like crossing a field full of goats who keep wandering over and butting you from random directions, causing you to stagger drunkenly. People’s cheeks ripple and stretch as though they were in one of those g-force centrifuges the air force uses, and their clothes shimmer as though you’re looking at them underwater. Trees lean tiredly.

Our latest battle with the elements came on Saturday – Margaret’s up for the week, and as it was a sunny day we thought we’d revisit the rugged and spectacular north coast. We thought we’d start with John o’ Groats, which was bleak and deserted this time of year. It’s curious, but no one seems to know how John o’ Groats came to be so famous – it’s not even the most northerly part of Scotland – that’s Dunnet Point just up the coast, which sticks up into the sea like the antenna on top of Bender the robot in Futurama. Nor can it be due to the charm of its architecture, consisting as it does of a ferry terminal and a large car park ringed with touristy souvenir shops, sheds with peeling paint, beyond which the land slopes abruptly down to the ocean. But on a clear day – like this – you get a good view of the island of Stroma, across the Pentland Firth. (incidentally, does anyone know the – pretty tenuous, I admit – connection between the Pentland Firth and the Lord of the Rings?)

You also get a lot of wind. We went down to look at the waves bursting like artillery shells on the harbour wall, spray like spouting whales, the ocean heaving menacingly like some great leviathan of the deep. But after watching a seagull effectively flying on the spot into a headwind for a while we decided enough was enough. (My new idea is to have car airbags double up as giant hot water bottles for days such as this, so you can at least get warm quickly.)

All of which reinforces the attraction of a gansey, though you’d also need several more layers and some thermal underwear if you were really venturing out. I’m inching my way nearer the start of the yoke, and the body is getting pretty floppy – I’ve got used to knitting ganseys that are patterned all over, so that the pattern effectively serves as reinforcing struts up the body, like the frame on an airship. Suddenly it feels like I have a drunken toddler on my lap, one with attention deficit disorder, or am trying to play a deflated set of bagpipes.

On Wednesday I gave a talk to the family history society. It seemed to go down well, though as I’m suffering with a nasty cold my voice gave out before the end and I finished up squeaking like Beaker from Sesame Street, and was reduced to getting my points across with hand gestures. As a thank-you they gave me a jar of golden local honey for my throat, which was very nice of them. There’s a possible joke to be made here about how Caithness honey should be cloudy and dark to reflect the weather, but that would be unfair – so long as it doesn’t give you wind…!

Gansey Nation

Humber 11: 5 – 11 December

Humber 10: 28 November – 4 December

Humber 9: 21 – 27 November

Humber 8: 14 – 20 November

Humber 7: 7 – 13 November

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