Gansey Nation

Balerno 9/10: 18 – 31 July

Front, before

Front, after

As the poet says, man rises on the stepping stones of his dead self to higher things. At the moment I’m sloughing dead selves faster than a snake sheds its skin!

And it was all going so well…

You see, ever since my cataract operations a few years back I’ve struggled to see really fine detail. Hard as it is to believe, sometimes I can’t tell if a stitch is a knit or a purl, especially if it’s a few rows back, and especially if the yarn is a dark colour. (Add to that a splash of colour blindness, just enough to make things interesting, and you can begin to appreciate my problem.)

So I have devised a system to keep track of where I am at any given time. I count off cables with a 7-barred gate and at regular intervals – at the end of every second diamond, say – I check the total number of rows against the number of completed diamonds (so ten 18-row diamonds equals 180 rows, equals 25 cables plus 5 rows). That way, I have a foolproof method of ensuring that I never get too far out of sync.

Ceiling detail, dome of Vaux-le-Vicomte

Foolproof, did I say? Alas the day. You see, I have one final, fatal problem to overcome, which is a tendency for my mind to wander at crucial times – or even for several days. So it was, gentle reader, that I made a crucial error – somehow I skipped a couple of rows, eliding two diamonds. I knew something was wrong at the time, I could see it wasn’t right; but because of my aforementioned eyesight problems I couldn’t tell what it was. (And, since Margaret was off big-game hunting in France, I couldn’t just ask anyone.) So I gave a mental shrug and carried on, slightly puzzled, but not even certain anything was wrong.

'Spot the mistake'

Until I got to the second diamond and discovered that the numbers didn’t add up; I was two rows short. You know that sensation where you go very hot and then very cold in rapid succession? If you imagine a Star Wars robot with blue lightning flickering over the casing just before it falls over, stunned, that was pretty much me. So some 3 inches has had to come out, about 8 hours work. Sigh.

Luckily, knitting for me is always more about process than results. I do it because I enjoy it – discovering completed ganseys dropping off the production line every few months is a sort of unexpected bonus. So I’m taking a few days off to recoup my energy, and then it’ll be as it if never happened.

Back

And at least I have completed the back (successfully – the numbers add up!), so you can get an idea of how the whole thing will look when it’s done.

While Margaret’s been away I’ve just got my head down and put in some 5-7 hours a day on the novel. I’ve almost finished the first draft – the 127th, really, if you count the number of times I’ve gone over it – there’s a just the final tweaking and polishing to go. It’s a historical fantasy, basically the Wars of the Roses with magic, and is also a supernatural murder mystery (who murdered the demon and why?). It clocks in at 70,000 words and I’m rather pleased with it, while accepting that I probably haven’t a hope of seeing it in print.

I’ve been in a ciabatta kind of mood, experimenting with rolls and loaves. I think they might have come out better if the oven hadn’t gone out halfway through!

It’s been that sort of week, really. And with all these dead selves to stand on, I’m starting to resemble an anxious meerkat on guard duty…

Balerno 8: 11 – 17 July

I wonder if Noah ever passed through Edinburgh during his travels? If so, he’d have felt right at home. And I’m not talking about the drunkenness and nudity, though there is that to consider. No, but when it comes to raining for 40 days and 40 nights, Edinburgh seems to be your town. Last week it go so bad I started building an Ark on Arthur’s Seat, but I didn’t have planning permission so the Council made me take it down. Old Testament prophets never had this problem.

In between dodging thunderstorms and lightning strikes I’ve been knitting. As you’ll see, I’ve reached the point of dividing front and back. So the gussets are on holders (spare lengths of old yarn, i.e.) and I’m knitting back-and-forth on a second pair of circular needles. As usual, it’s a bit of a shock to the system to be alternating recto and verso, as it were, so I’m making a few mistakes which have to be painstakingly corrected as I go, dammit, and I have to take care to keep the stitches as even as possible – though it will all even out in the wash, so I’m not worried.

I really like the feel of the needle I’m using – a “Knit Picks Classic Circular Knitting Needle”. It’s got a nice, sharp nose like Concorde (most dpns have the nose of a jumbo jet) and the metal tip doesn’t have a coating to flake off, like many do. I tried another pair first – a “Susan Bates Quicksilver”, which I liked the sound of (one of my favourite Neal Stephenson novels has the same name). But I had a couple of problems with it: firstly, it was 73.5cm, not 80cm, and felt a bit tight; and secondly, I knit so tightly my stitches constantly snagged on the lip where the needle joins the plastic holder part. So I regretfully had to abandon it.

Heigh ho. I’ve sent out my manuscript to 30 literary agents so far. 20 have already rejected it; the other 10 are currently working out how to let me down gently. But then, I tell myself, if it was easy, any old tat would make it into print. (What’s that you say? Oh.) Perseverance is the key, though it’s hard not to feel just a smidgeon discouraged.

By way of consolation, I’ve been baking bread with sugar in. This is a sandwich bread, made with oil, milk and egg, so it’s very soft and very dense – and did I mention the sugar? It’s like a hot cross bun without the fruit, the cross, or the heat, and a little goes a long way. Next time I plan to add some cinnamon and raisins and see what happens. (Death by hardened arteries, probably.)

Finally a heads-up, there won’t be a blog next week. Margaret’s going away on what I like to call a holiday, though she describes it as a trial separation, so I plan to take a break from writing of all kinds. The fact that I find the blog software too complicated to use has absolutely nothing to do with it…

Now I’m off to write a letter to the Press Complaints Commission. Turns out I’m the only person in Britain whose phone wasn’t hacked by Rupert Murdoch’s News International, and I want to know why.

Balerno 7: 4 – 10 July

First of all, a thank you to all who read this blog, which last month went above 100,000 hits per month for the first time. I know that’s still modest in web terms, but it’s gratifying that so many people are tuning in to read (or at least look at the pictures). So, while the dreams of sponsorship and expensive cars are still a ways off, nevertheless our heartfelt thanks to all our readers.

The last two or three years have been, as readers with long memories will know, especially difficult. Redundancy, relocation and unemployment after finding myself working for Spawn Of Satan Ltd have all taken their toll. I would say that writing this blog has kept me sane, but my psychiatrist would beg to differ. Anyway, here’s to many more visitors to this site. And, of course, expensive cars.

Speaking of the website, a curious phenomenon has arisen: I am getting junk mail. And not just any junk mail, but messages informing me that a selection of Russian prostitutes are waiting to, as they charmingly put it, “make me happy”. (I assume this means they’re going to do the ironing, unless something got lost in translation.) Now, In order for me to get an email through this website, someone has to overcome our spam filter – it’s a pretty common device, you have to physically verify you’re human by typing in a code which a machine can’t read. So someone has sat at their computer and filled in the form, setting out the happiness-making capabilities of Russian prostitutes.

Let’s just think about this for a minute. This is a knitting blog, for heaven’s sake! Who do they think reads it? Has there been a sudden upsurge in gansey knitting among lonely young professionals? Is the Moray Firth Gansey Project really a human trafficking operation, luring vulnerable young girls to our shores with promises of high living and fine knitwear? (Answer: no, it’s not.) Let’s put it this way, I think the marketing plan and audience profiling of whoever is sending these emails needs serious work, and I’ve offered my services as a consultant if they’d like advice on how to target a more appropriate clientele.

But back to the subject of the blog. Ganseys! I’ve reached the gussets, those wonderful diamond-shaped pouches that sit under the arms and increase movement for the wearer, as well as offering a bit more room around the chest, useful if you ever have the urge to go weightlifting in your gansey. They’re going to be about 4 inches long on this one, and are just under 3 inches now. I’ve been increasing at a rate of 2 stitches every 4 rows (my default rate for gussets) and it’s 19 stitches across so far. I’m making the increases on the stitch immediately inside the edge stitch of the gusset, which as you can see from the photos ensures a nice unbroken row along the edge on each side, and makes for a nice effect.

A couple of other parish notices. First of all, I’ve been approached by Tracie at the Yarn Cafe, asking me to let people know they now stock Frangipani wool in 100g and 500g balls/cones, which I’m happy to do. Also, Margaret spotted that Michael Pearson’s book, Traditional Knitting: Aran, Fair Isle and Fisher Ganseys, is now available for pre-order from Amazon UK (Amazon US link here). (The UK cover price is £19.99, publication date is 30 September, looks like a new cover.)

Finally, this week’s bread: Peter Reinhart’s recipe for cheesesteak rolls. Though in my case, being vegetarian, that would probably be “cheesequorn” rolls, which hasn’t got the same ring. Also, I’ve given up cheese, so the concept falls apart, rather. But they’re soft, made with milk and oil and an egg, and sweet, with a bit of added sugar, and whatever you want to put on them is fine with me!

I hope you continue to enjoy reading this blog, and please get in touch and tell me what you think. Unless, of course, you’re a Russian prostitute, in which case I only want to hear from you if you’re interested in knitting a warm garment to keep out the Siberian winter…

Balerno 6: 27 June – 3 July

As I write this the sun is shining on Edinburgh, birds are singing, and little boys are skateboarding down the hill outside and causing multiple accidents as they collide with oncoming traffic at the bottom. A typical summer’s day, you might say. And – what follows is a bit shocking, so those of you of a nervous disposition may choose to skip to the next paragraph – with the extreme daring of a Victorian bather I have taken my socks off and rolled up my trouser legs an inch or two. If this keeps up we’re talking shorts, and to hell with the neighbours’ blood pressure, say I.

It was so nice last week, in fact, that we went for an excursion in the four-wheeler, down the coast to Eyemouth (which always makes me think it should be twinned with Earnose, or something). I’m trying to visit all the old fishing towns and villages I can, places where gansey patterns have been collected, without getting all obsessive about it.

Eyemouth is a lovely little town of some 3,400 inhabitants, and has the feel of a real fishing port, not a tourist recreation, which is the fate of so much of Britain’s heritage. Eyemouth is the genuine article, with battered old working fishing boats tied up in the harbour, heaps of lobster pots drying in the sun, a working shipyard, a fish market and a strong smell of fish. I loved it. There wasn’t much activity on a sleepy sunny June morning, nor, of course, any ganseys in this day and age, just a few dog walkers and employees of the main fish merchants in town in their rubber aprons and wellies, ready for a hard day’s gaffing, and a couple of men working on a boat in the shipyard.

We parked on the sea front and wandered up the beach, picking our way through sand, shingle, jellyfish and dog poo, trying to decide if the lumps on the rocks out at sea were seals or, er, lumps of rock. (They probably wondered the same about us.) In fact, the beach was strewn with glistening, blobby, beached purple jellyfish, looking as if Shrek had a cold but had forgotten his handkerchief. We heard on the news later that Torness nuclear power station just up the coast had to shut down both its reactors when this swarm of jellyfish clogged their cooling water filters. (None of the jellyfish I saw looked to be associated with Greenpeace, but you never know.)

The harbour is a deep gash like a narrow V in the coastline, the point where the River Eye bleeds into the ocean, and we walked down one side, then up the other, in full Old Salt mode, trying to work out where all the boats came from by their registrations (one was from Exeter, nearly as far from home as we were). One of these days I’m going to apply for an Arts Council Grant and go round these wonderful old places with a bunch of ganseys and some hired extras and recreate the famous old photographs of fishermen by Sutcliffe et al.

Speaking of ganseys, I’m still making good progress. This is going to be quite a long one – 27/28 inches – so I still haven’t reached the gussets. (The basic dimensions will be as follows. Body: 15/16 inches. Gussets: 4 inches. Armhole & shoulder: 8 inches.) Not far to go before I start the gussets.

Finally, I decided it was time to move my bread baking up a notch and try my hand at croissants. This is the first time I’ve ever made them, and they’re really not as troublesome as I’d been led to believe. (In fact, if it wasn’t for the 368g of butter per batch, I’d probably make them all the time now!) They take a long time, since you have to let the dough rest between each fold, but you can freeze them – we now have a freezer full. Next time I’ll roll the dough out thinner and make them a bit smaller, and the shaping could be better, but really they’re not bad for a first go. And they taste great with fresh coffee…

And you’ll be relieved to know that since I started writing this, it has clouded over (changeable or what?). Summer is temporarily put on hold, and the shorts remain in the drawer, like a faithful old sheepdog who’s never lost hope that it might be taken out for one last round-up of the flock…

Balerno 5: 21 – 26 June

In the life of every gansey I knit, there comes a point when it suddenly shoots along, like a time-lapse film of bamboo growing or a gangly teenager you only see once a year. Well, if you compare the pictures from last week with this week, you’ll see that we’ve just reached that stage.

The Red Arrows on Armed Forces Day

I’d like to pretend this is a result of my monastic existence during Margaret’s absence, while she was sunning herself in the south of France and having to wrestle with the future imperative of irregular verbs like “être”. But sadly it was just because the weather has been so miserable here in Edinburgh, wet and cold, that it was simply better to pretend that the outside world was a figment of my imagination – rather like the efficient universe proposed by Bishop Berkeley in the 18th century, in which the bits you didn’t need at any given time (such as the middle of a rainforest when no one is looking) would simply cease to exist until required again. (To my utter delight we watched a programme on TV last night on which a physicist seriously suggested the universe might really work like this.)

Tuesday was the solstice, of course, the – ahem – longest day. I watched through the rain out the lounge window as Calton Hill slowly disappeared under low cloud and mist, until by six o’clock it was so dark I had to turn the lights on.

Anyway, as you’ll see from the pictures the gansey is going like a breeze. The overall length will be some 28 inches, shoulder to ribbing, so I’m about 3-4 inches away from starting the gussets – maybe next week, if I can keep this rate up. It’s now too heavy to support its own weight and has to be filmed lying down (not unlike me after an Indian meal).

I also reached a milestone on the novel last week, 60,000 words. Not bad for 6 weeks. It’s interesting how different people write: some plan a novel out beforehand in great detail (the SF writer Neal Stephenson writes longhand in fountain pen, and when asked what he did about rewriting sentences replied that he made sure he got his sentences right first time, the swine). Stephen King reckons he doesn’t know how the story will go when he starts, and can’t plan his novels out in advance. I’ve discovered that I find out what a book is about as I write – but when I’ve reached a certain point, such as now, I have to go back and rewrite the whole thing, pulling it all together and planting clues and foreshadowing. It’s not very efficient (apologies to Bishop Berkeley) but it works for me. So that’s what I’ve started to do today.

Friday when Margaret got back was the start of Armed Forces Day Weekend, so we got several flypasts from the Red Arrows up and down the Forth. This meant we kept running to the front and back of the flat like tag sprinters to catch a glimpse of jet trail, thus keeping our fitness levels up but doing nothing for the digestion.

Finally, last week I promised some examples of Margaret’s amazing polymer clay work. So here they are. (And I thought knitting was hard…)