Gansey Nation

A very warm welcome back to the ganseys blog, after the summer recess. I hope you had a good summer – I spent most of it in a sort of contented hibernation, lapsing into a vegetative coma on the sofa, so that periodically Margaret would be obliged to drop in and hold a mirror up to my lips to see if I was still breathing.

I did rouse myself on a couple of occasions, however. As some of you may have noticed, we’ve made a few changes to the website. After a number of requests, and with some trepidation, I’ve included a complete “How to…” section, showing how I go about planning, sizing and knitting a gansey from start to finish. I hope you find this useful, and if you have any observations you’d like to make, disagree with any of my methods, know an alternative way of doing something, or would just like more information, please post a comment or drop me a line.

Meanwhile, during what we drolly refer to as summer in Edinburgh, I’ve been polishing my bread-baking skills, or “poolishing” (yes, I’m making bread jokes now), and have developed a sourdough or wild yeast culture which is now living in the fridge and growing like one of those creatures that used to give me nightmares in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. With it I’ve learned how to make baguettes, pain de campagne, pain a l’ancienne, and (on bad days) dark matter under laboratory conditions.

I thought I’d take advantage of not doing very much to crack on with a gansey that’s been in my mind for a while – in fact, regular readers will recall that I’ve flirted with this pattern off and on for some years. I’m referring to the famous Henry Freeman of Whitby pattern, which crops up everywhere and is referenced for example in Staithes and even Edinburgh. The reason I’ve hummed and hawed in the past is that it doesn’t show very clearly in my stitch gauge – in the wrong light it can look like a scrambled jumble of random stitches (though in a strong light coming from above it’s very effective). But since I hope in the long run to include examples of most types of pattern on this website, then the collection would be incomplete without it. And, if nothing else, it would show anyone else thinking of knitting it how it comes out.

So here we are – I’ve finished the body up to the yoke, and done three-quarters of the back. I haven’t gone mad yet, not even when I found I’d knit an entire row out of sync and had to re-do all 426 stitches. (By the way, this is the gansey I’ve used as my example in the planning section of the “How To Knit” pages, so if you wish to look up the details you’ll find it all in there.)

Finally, if you ever thought you had a dangerous job, take a look at the photos below – while partaking of morning tea one day, our eyes were caught by this painter decorating the outside of a window across the street – four stories up. I mean, I know archives is a terribly risky profession – actuaries call it “the widowmaker” – but this…

Just a brief update this week, as I’ve been knocked sideways by the same blasted cold I mentioned last time and so haven’t really got out much, so not much to report.

I almost invented a new art form when I realised that my mucus-filled tissues, when wet, could be formed into interesting patterns, and would keep their shape when dry – but somehow the idea of snot sculptures seemed a bit too gross, even for me, so I offer it here for any contemporary artist who wishes to make a statement about decay, transcience, mortality or the abject failure of the English football team at the World Cup. (But suddenly we are world-beaters at cricket – how did that happen? Is this a consequence of Doctor Who rebooting the universe last week?)

While I’ve been stuck at home planning my new consultancy venture, I’ve been looking into the new austerity budget and discovered that our new insect overlords in Government have decided to cut costs by – wait for it – ceasing to employ consultants. Timing, as they say, is everything, and on the face of it this doesn’t bode well, does it? But I must admit I like a challenge, and I am currently developing services I can offer to businesses, as well as museums and archives, so hopefully I’ll find some clients come the autumn when it all gets serious.

And, frustrating as being ill can be, it’s given me a good excuse to catch up on my knitting – hence the significant progress down the sleeve. Another week should do it (then I have to work out what to do with it). There’s another bonus to getting this far down the sleeve, too, which is that the rest of the pullover doesn’t have to sit in your lap while you’re knitting; very important when the weather gets hot and sticky, as it is just now. So we open the windows, and chase the faint breeze round the house like sailors on an old-fashioned sailing ship caught in the doldrums.

Still, we’ve passed the longest day – the nights are starting to draw in, and remember: there are just 179 sleeps till Christmas…

I’ve discovered that when I go for a walk, I’m not really all that aware of my surroundings – basically, a walk is an opportunity for me to think. So I tend to walk with my head down, looking at the ground in front of my feet, but otherwise miles away. Now, it turns out that not everyone takes that approach. Some people actually pay attention to their surroundings; some people – this was actually a surprise – think the purpose of going for a walk in the country is to look at nature and, in effect, inventory it.

So one day on our recent holiday we went for a walk in the sunny woods and fields of Cape Cod – just Margaret, her sister Gail, the minister’s wife (or “Mrs Rev”, as I like to think of her), and me. It was a shock to not even get out of the car park before the first debate began:

“What’s that flower?”
“Which – the floriliscum herbiborderi?”
“No, the one behind it. Isn’t that a purple-tongued ladykiller?”
“No, they don’t grow in sunlight. That’s a flaxen-haired arglebargle.”
“It can’t be an arglebargle, their leaves are shaped like the sound of emptiness in underground caverns. What you’ve got there is a deathweed.”
“No, deathweeds have all been extinct since the meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs. Anyway, judging by the stamen I’d say it’s a bottle-nosed bee-catcher.”
“It can’t be a bee-catcher, look, it’s only got 167 hairs on the filament, and bee-catchers have at least 169.”
“Tipsi Vodcerii?”
“A Prince Charles Nose?”
“The common scumbag?”
“You know, just a thought, but it could be a scragwort. Except they live on children’s tears and there just wouldn’t be enough children to sustain them here.”
“It certainly looks like a scragwort, now you come to mention it.”
“Just a minute, let’s look it up. Yup, here we are – scragwort – let’s see, lives on children’s tears… and in alkaline soil has adapted to also survive on disappointed dreams.”
“Oh, that explains it. Yes, the dreams’d do it. Definitely a scragwort.”

And so on (or something like that – I may have confused some of the technical names) for a goodly mile or more.

Very strange. You see, nature to me is effectively one thing, indivisible, rather like a still photograph. It’s all just “nature” to me. Going for a walk in the company of people who actually understand it has the effect of bringing bits of it into close up, or putting it under the microscope: it’s amazing all the stuff that’s out there. But learning the names of plants and birds is a bit like learning Latin declensions, or the capitols of Europe – it feels like homework, somehow. So I think I’ll continue to let it wash over me, and get my expertise vicariously.

Meanwhile, I’ve slogged my way to the end of the gusset on Sleeve 2 – and it really felt a bit of a slog, too. But it’s speeding up, and the end is now in sight. For those gusset-watchers among you, note that I’ve decreased on the left-hand 2 edge stitches of the gusset, but on the right edge I’ve decreased on the 2nd and 3rd stitches in from the right, leaving the very edge untouched. The purpose of this is to ensure an unbroken edge stitch – if you decrease on the 2 edge stitches on the right, the one on the very edge is always being engulfed by the one to the left of it, like a kitten being swallowed by a python. It just makes a neater effect, that’s all.

Time for a walk…