Gansey Nation

I first came across the term “displacement activity” in Desmond Morris’s bestselling book of popular sociology from the 1970s, Manwatching (along with some rather racy photographs that helped me through adolescence – well, the internet hadn’t been invented yet, we had to make our own entertainment). A displacement activity is anything you do that brings comfort while at the same time puts off some other activity you don’t want to face up to.

So, faced with a mountain of laundry, you might decide to have a cup of tea first, or write a shopping list, or arrange your fish knives in alphabetical order, or (ahem) write a blog – anything that helps you avoid facing up to reality. This week, faced with the logistical nightmare of moving up to Wick, my displacement activity has been knitting – which goes some way to explain how much I’ve got done. (Hey, it’s not like I haven’t done anything – I’ve started a list. That’s got to count for something, right?)

As I said before, I cast on 388 stitches. After 3 inches of basic knit 2/purl 2 ribbing I increased to 432 stitches. My basic stitch gauge is about 9.25 stitches to the inch on 2.25mm needles, so that should give me something in the region of my target width of 46 inches or so. (The yoke pattern will involve cables, which will pull the chest in a bit, and there will be purl columns running the length of the body, so I should have some flexibility when it comes to block it in, oh, about three years’ time.)

I’m going to follow one of the Humber “keel and sloop” gansey patterns from Michael Pearson’s book (the old edition, not the new reprinted one, since when I went to order it from Amazon UK I found it had already sold out, after just 3 days, dammit – so congratulations to Michael on a successful launch). I plan to adapt Mrs Jackson’s pattern from p.102, one of the really elaborate ones.

It’s one of those ganseys with a plain body and a patterned yoke. I’ll post the yoke pattern when I come to it (in other words, when I’ve worked out what it’ll be!) but one of the elements of this pattern that’s a little unusual, and which I wanted to explore, is a narrow patterned panel either side of each seam stitch (see pattern chart). This consists of a section of moss stitch bordered by a 15-stitch chevron panel – the rest of the body is plain. These strips run the whole length of the body, and continue uninterrupted into the yoke, and on up to the shoulder. It’s too early to tell how they’ll look – I’m barely an inch into the body – but already it helps break up some of the endless knit stitches you get with a completely plain body.

We occasionally get asked what Margaret gets up to when she isn’t riding shotgun on my various gansey projects. Being rather more representative of the wider knitting community than I, the answer is, pretty much whatever takes her fancy. Here’s her latest project – I think it’s a modified fishing net for catching moths, but I could be wrong.

After much to-ing and fro-ing, I finally depart for Wick on Thursday 13th, when hopefully I will move into my temporary lodgings (Margaret’s coming up for a few days, but will be returning to Edinburgh until we find somewhere more permanent). So there may be some disruption to the blog over the next few weeks – please bear with us, if so. And I start work on Monday 17th, which gives me a week to try to remember just what it is that archivists do.

Meanwhile I suppose I’d better get started on packing and sorting out what clothes to take – oh, is that the time? Well, maybe after lunch. Oh, and I’ve got to post that letter. Well. Perhaps I could just squeeze in another couple of rows first…

And so, here it is, the Finished Article. As ever, you can’t really see how a gansey’s going to come out until it’s been washed and blocked, and this one, if I say so myself, came out rather well. You can see it in the pictures, pinned out like Lemuel Gulliver being captured by the Lilliputians. Though – as ever – I won’t be able to relax until I see if it actually fits the intended recipient. All that’s left now is to add it to the gallery and move on to the next project or, if it doesn’t fit, to change my name and move to Latin America in disgrace.

Speaking of my next project, my intended target still hasn’t given me his measurements – I’m seeing him tomorrow, and my current plan is to summon a couple of policemen, accuse him of stealing my wallet, and then, while his arms are pinned, whip out a tape measure and stealthily measure his chest and arms. Then run like blazes. It should work, right?

We spent part of last week with my parents in the gentle rolling fields of Northamptonshire, a last visit before we vanish into the Frozen North. As I think I’ve mentioned before, they live in an old ex-pub beside the Grand Union Canal (see picture). The house is getting a bit too large for my parents now – too many stairs – but so much of my life is tied up with it, it’ll be hard to see it go; I can probably still match the various indentations in my forehead to the low wooden beams that cross the ceilings, from the many occasions when I nearly knocked myself out by forgetting to duck (‘But shouldn’t he be breathing, doctor?’).

Suddenly, it’s all go. We’re off back to Wick later this week to try to find me somewhere to rent in the short term, and maybe start scoping out houses to buy. Bizarrely, it’s almost impossible to find somewhere to stay in Wick for more than one night at a time, and if you try to book less than a week ahead all the rooms are full. What’s going on? Don’t get me wrong, I love Caithness and its coast, but this is rather puzzling. What can they all be doing up there? (I’d like to think they’re visiting the archives, but maybe not.) My current theory is that a James Bond supervillain is setting up a secret base in the wilds near Dunnet Head, and that the mists and low clouds are really produced by a screening device to hide it from view; and all these people are his new henchmen and technicians, who have answered advertisements in the Caithness Bugle. I shall of course make it my business to investigate, but if I disappear suddenly, or meet with a mysterious “accident”, make sure the authorities are alerted – and avenge me.

Are any of you going to the Ganseyfest in Inverness this weekend, part of the Moray Firth Gansey Project? If so, you’ll see 5 of my ganseys there, in the exhibition and maybe even in the fashion show (their latest flyer for the fashion show even shows one of mine being modelled by a suitably rugged-looking chap). We’re hoping to look in on the Sunday, but it’s come at the wrong time for us as we scoot from one end of the country to the other. (Inverness is about halfway between Edinburgh and Wick, a 2.5 hour drive for us.) If you do attend, and want to know how to recognise me, I’ll be the bloke.

Coming back to the blocked gansey, I’m thinking of treating myself to a wooly board, or jumper board, one of those frames that you can stretch pullovers on to dry them. Jamieson & Smith do a decent-looking one for about £80. Has anyone any experience of these? We used to own one, but it was plastic and eventually cracked and broke. Do they spoil the welt? How easy are they to use? Any observations gratefully received.

As I type this on Sunday evening the advance guard of ex-hurricane Katia is rattling our doors and spattering our windows with raindrops hard as machine-gun bullets. And this is especially bad news because tomorrow we’re travelling up to Wick on the far northeastern tip of Scotland for a few days (think John o’Groats, then turn right, stopping before you hit the ocean and then down a bit) – just when the main force of dear old Katia is supposed to arrive like a Biblical plague (frogs for preference).

The forecasters are talking about 70+ mph winds and the possibility of flooding, though to be fair they do rather tend to take a pessimistic view. (“It’s going to be a hurricane, well, more of a tropical storm, but anyway, definitely a flood – did I say a flood? I meant heavy rain; either way, there could be puddles, some of them quite deep – though not so much rain now I come to think of it, more a sort of drizzle, definitely a mist. Look, be on the safe side, take some sunblock just in case.”) Actually, the worst of it’s supposed to hit the central belt and the west, so as we’re going north and east we should be OK.

I paid yet another visit to my favourite hospital last week to see a consultant about my tinnitus and a blocked sensation I get sometimes in my ear, as when I used to play rugby and someone’s knee would collide with the side of my head – which was rather a feature of my rugby-playing days, alas. First they made me take a hearing test, which involved putting on a set of headphones and pressing a button when I heard each of a series of bleeps and boops – not unlike listening to King Crimson LPs in my youth – and I was delighted to be told that there’s nothing wrong with my hearing (except the constant noise like a dentist’s drill buzzing away).

Then came the consultant, a sort of anti-House, terribly nice but curiously embarrassed, like an elderly vicar about to judge the wet t-shirt competition at the village fete. He peered inside each of my ears with a gizmo resembling Doctor Who’s sonic screwdriver, looked down my throat, then stood behind me with his hands round my throat and asked me to open and shut my mouth several times to see if my jaw was out of whack. After which he told me he was sorry, but there was nothing pathologically wrong with me. Ten minutes after I arrived I was standing on the pavement wondering if that was really worth the four-month wait, and looking for the road works only to find that was the tinnitus again. (At least, I thought, House actually cures his patients, even if he abuses them in the process and almost kills them first.)

Ah, well. As you will see from the pictures, the gansey is almost completed – just the 6 inches of ribbing on the cuff to go. Should be done this week, wind and weather permitting, after which it just has to be washed and blocked. I’m already thinking about my next project – I had planned to knit a gansey for a friend of mine from Musselburgh, but he still hasn’t given me his measurements, the swine. I may have to use underhand, devious, low tactics and ask his wife.

This week’s bread is Dan Leader’s “quintessential French sourdough”. It’s made with white flour mixed with some wholemeal and rye, to which I added some honey to un-sour it a little. The rye flour changes the consistency, so that it’s a bit like kneading a cement made from the ash you find left in your grate after a fire. Still, it gives a nice crackling crust and a chewy crumb with lots of holes – what more can you ask for?

Right, I’m off to start packing for tomorrow. I won’t be able to respond to any messages for a few days but hope to be back in circulation by the end of the week. And on the off chance that anything should happen to us, tell my brother he can’t have my cd collection – I want it cremated with me in a Viking funeral on the boating lake in Llandrindod Wells…