Gansey Nation

As this is, at heart, a gansey knitting blog, it’s probably time to get back to the basic, nitty-grittyness of actually knitting a gansey again.

This one is going to be a cardigan for Margaret, which isn’t something I’ve ever tried before, and which is going to be … interesting. (And, without wishing to give away the ending prematurely, scissors may be involved later. Sooner if it doesn’t go well.)

After much debate in which Margaret, bless her, tried to get me to understand the various ways in which a cardigan can be knitted in the round (and to which I responded, as a good student of medieval philosophy, by applying Gordon’s Razor, my own version of the “lex parsimoniae”, which basically holds that I will stop paying attention as soon as I’m asked to understand anything complicated), we agreed that I would attempt it via the steek method.

This means that I will knit the cardigan exactly as I would any other gansey, in the round, but that I will add a panel of some 20 stockinette stitches in the front centre (where the cardigan’s zip will go). This is the “steek”. When the gansey is finished, we will ceremoniously take the aforementioned scissors and cut the steek up the middle (hopefully with greater success than when I try to cut Christmas wrapping paper, which looks like I was being tickled while simultaneously having the hiccoughs and accidentally sticking a toe in a light fitting). The edges are then folded back and stitched down and a zip will be attached up the middle. Sounds straightforward, no?

One advantage to having quite a few ganseys lying around the place as moth hatcheries is that sizing is relatively simple: you just ask the subject to keep trying them on until they stumble across one that seems to fit, or they lose interest, and use that as a model.

So this one has 384 stitches in the round at cast on, plus a central steek of 20 stitches, making 404 stitches in all. (As ever, it is important that all the stitches add up to a multiple of 4 for the knit 2/purl 2 ribbing, or 96 ribs plus the steek, which isn’t ribbed, of course.)

I haven’t sorted out the pattern yet – I’ll worry about that when I get to the end of the ribbing – like waiting till you’re out of harbour before charting the exact course of your voyage. But I’m keen to do a Fife fishing fleet pattern of some kind, probably a combination out of Gladys Thomson’s recorded patterns.

Thanks to those of you who’ve already downloaded and read my fantasy novel (my “shabby little shocker”, as a critic once famously described Puccini’s Tosca), and for your positive feedback. I’ve decided to try my hand at another book, the idea for which came to me while I was sitting in the hospital last week. I’ve written 24,000 words already, and I can best describe the plot as a combination of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Kant’s metaphysics,which should be an easy sell to a publisher, right?

Finally, I’m still persevering with my sourdough experiments. Here’s a light and airy white loaf, not quite as successful as the loaf I posted a few weeks back, but still pretty good. The other is an attempt at a wholemeal sourdough, which alas counts as a failure – same recipe, but the wild yeast culture just wasn’t strong enough to raise the heavier wholemeal flour. (On the plus side, placed under doors and on window cills they make great draft excluders…)

Winter came early to Scotland this year, with record low temperatures for November and lots of snow. Cars are slithering up the hill, the drivers hunched over the steering wheels, peering like Mr Magoo, and on the pavements people are walking as carefully as if they were crossing a rope bridge over a crocodile pit. Suddenly everyone’s an octogenarian. And it’s cold, well below freezing.

I’ve invented a new temperature index, which takes into account how annoyed I am at the cold and inconvenience, since I don’t find celsius very helpful in this regard. It’s not numerical, but uses Dante’s nine levels of Hell as its model. So, Saturday, when it snowed a bit but I didn’t have to go outside, rated as Level 3, Gluttony (shouldn’t have finished that apple cake). But today, when it snowed a lot and I had to go and get a haircut and stepped in a deep well of slush at the crossing and it’s too cold to get my bread to rise, rates as Level 5, Wrath and Sullenness. (Mostly sullenness, to be honest.)

This coming Wednesday, when I have to finally go and have my dreaded septoplasty operation, will probably be a Level 7, Violence, since at the moment it’s an open question if I’ll be able to drive there easily. Especially if it keeps snowing like this and it freezes, as is forecast.

The first bit of bad news is that I’ll be under a general anaesthetic. Now, given that the last time I had one of those I was still throwing up 2 days later, you’ll understand why I’m not looking forward to it. Then they carefully explained to me what the procedure would involve, with diagrams, and suddenly I understood the serial killer in Silence of the Lambs. Let’s put it this way, if they reattach my face the right way up when they’ve finished I’ll count myself ahead of the game. (Keywords to look out for in next week’s blog: crusting, discharge, blood, swallow, clot, splint, bruising, hypochondria, baby, big, you and girly-man.)

Ever the optimist, I’m assuming I’ll survive, and have ordered the yarn for Margaret’s cardigan gansey – the colour will be sea spray, from Frangipani in Cornwall – in celebratory anticipation. I’m still thinking about the pattern, which will involve some haggling with Margaret, though this can wait a week or two till I’ve finished the welt. So long as it’s got cables in there somewhere I won’t mind.

Here is the next instalment, Part Two of the novel, in which our heroes continue their epic quest into Mordor to destroy the Ring, while Aragorn… No wait. That’s part Three.

Download Part Two as a PDF file here.

Download Part Two as an eBook here.

Finally, after last week’s dismal sourdough (the world’s first sourdough medicine ball) I can report a major breakthrough in my experiments. Basically, I increased the amount of sourdough starter I was using and reduced the amount of flour, et voila! Nous avons le pain au levain shit hot parfait.

This week we did something we’ve been meaning to do for some time, and paid a visit to the Anstruther Scottish Fisheries Museum in Anstruther. It was a beautiful day (i.e., the one day of the week when it wasn’t raining), perfect for a trip up the Fife coast.

So off we drove. Anstruther is about an hour and a half north of Edinburgh, over the Forth bridge, and it’s a very pleasant drive, meandering up the coast road. (Of course, you have to be strong and not get sidetracked by the advertisements to go see Scotland’s Secret Bunker and the enticingly named Kingdom of Fun along the way, which requires some willpower.)

I’ve had a bit of a thing for east coast fishing towns and villages ever since we lived in Lowestoft, and Anstruther is definitely up there. The seafront has lots of restaurants and fish and chip shops, there are quaint back alleys and wynds, and you can walk out along the harbour to the lighthouse, and get a good view of the sea. Of course, there must be a reason why they need a sea wall over six feet high, but I haven’t been able to work it out yet…

I hate to say it, but we were a little bit disappointed by the museum. Just a bit. Of course, my main interest is ganseys, and I accept that’s not the typical reason for visiting; but despite housing the Moray Ganseys Project temporary exhibition, they didn’t really have much interesting knitwear on display. A couple of the dummies were wearing ganseys, but these were hidden under waistcoats or oilskins; and they had a small glass case dedicated to fishermen’s knitting, but the lights weren’t on in that gallery, and it was impossible to see any detail.

The museum itself is interesting, much larger than it looks from the outside, consisting of several buildings knocked together, and you can tour galleries ranging from the age of sail to the introduction of steam, view a recreated fisherman’s cottage, and walk round the hulk of a real fishing boat, or watch someone working on a sail boat.

So why weren’t we more impressed? I suppose it’s because, although each item was displayed and labelled, it didn’t really add up to a coherent narrative. There wasn’t a “wow” factor, nothing to make you stop and think, no real human interest. (Actually, that’s not fair – they have a very effective room like a chapel, with plaques to fishermen lost at sea on the walls.) But I was hoping for more than a bunch of fishing-related stuff in glass cases and some of the world’s least convincing dummies. Hopefully when I go again it will click.

Don’t get me wrong – it’s well worth a visit, though I’d recommend going in summer since they don’t appear to heat the galleries in winter, or turn on all the lights for the displays. (I still plan to donate a couple of my ganseys to them one day, if they’re interested.) And I can recommend the museum cafeteria unreservedly. Agent Cooper from Twin Peaks might have had reservations about their coffee, but not about the coffee cake.

The trip was by way of a celebration, as I’ve finally finished the gansey. I slogged my way down the cuff with all the enthusiasm of the Allies fighting their way up Italy in World War 2, with similarly happy results, though it felt like it took as long in the end. Speaking of ends, I darned them in last night, so all we have to do now is wash it and block it and then feed it to the moths. So the cycle of life continues.

This week’s bread is a sourdough rye bread. Closer textured than normal bread (rye hasn’t got any gluten, or something), I’m not sure how much of the final density is due to my inexperience or if it’s supposed to be that way. I decided to move it off the counter when it started attracting a garlic press and a couple of spoons into close orbit around it…