I’m back from my travels, and have also recovered from the adventure, returning home a week ago Sunday. Both segments of the trip – the bamboo pipe course and the handbell shindig – were tiring in their own way.
The journey to and from the pipe course was the bulk of the travel. This started with a bus to Inverness and a train to Inverness airport. Unfortunately, the airport train stops three-quarters of a mile from the terminal, and the suitcase had to be cajoled to the terminal. But then I was free of it until arriving in France. From Inverness, I flew to Heathrow and met two friends at an airport hotel who were also going to the course. Our flight was early the next morning at 7:15.
Viviers sunset
From Heathrow, we flew to Lyon, where my suitcase almost made it to baggage reclaim. The conveyor belt that drops bags onto the carousel stopped as my suitcase was on the cusp of being spit out. It was unreachable, so I explained my predicament to an airport employee, who contacted the baggage handlers. The bag was eventually ejected when the next flight’s luggage arrived.
We had a long wait at the airport before taking the TGV (Train à Grande Vitesse) for the next leg, so we parked ourselves in a café in the terminal. The station was handily next to the airport, and it didn’t take long to orient ourselves and find the platform. The train was a double-decker, and our seats were on the lower deck. We found places to stow our bags, and in doing so, encountered piping friends also on the way to the course – they’d boarded in Paris. The TGV was wonderful – smooth, quiet, fast.
Lyon Airport
For the final leg, the course organisers had arranged for transport from the station closest to the course. We piled into a variety of private vehicles and were taken to our home for the next week, a former seminary in the cathedral town of Viviers. The week was full of catching up with old friends, playing and learning, and making pipes if you’d chosen to do so. One of my classes was learning the ‘ney’, an end-blown flute from the Middle East. It was very difficult – it has to be held just so, and blown just so, to get a sound. By the end of the week, I could get a sound, but not reliably, and some workshop participants never managed it.
Velos in Viviers
In the middle of the week, there was a day of excursions. The choices were caves, a lavender farm, a scenic village & beach, or kayaking (for the younger set). I had chosen the caves, thinking there would be cave paintings. However, they didn’t, but the caves were cool, with enormous stalactites and stalagmites.
All too soon, the week was over. This time we took the local, air conditioned bus to the train station where we waited, sitting in the shade and thankful for the breeze on a very hot day. Then the TGV to Lyon and another long wait until our flight to Heathrow. We finally arrived in Blighty around 10 pm, where we parted ways – one to head home, and two of us to an airport hotel. The next day, I flew north to Aberdeen for the handbell symposium, which I’ll cover next week.
In the caves of Aven d’Orgnac
Finally, the head is healing well. I wore the bandage every day while away and am easy to spot in the events’ photos. I saw the practice nurse on my return, and we’ve agreed I needn’t wear it at home, and the wound will only need checking once a week.
The gansey did not go on holiday with me. Instead, I took a pair of socks and a spare ball of sock yarn ‘just in case’. I didn’t need it – it was too hot in France to knit. The organisers had scheduled for this and most activities were in the morning or late afternoon, with the early afternoon free. Both my roommate and I took full advantage of this because the heat was very tiring. But back to the gansey. It was started before I left, and the hem welts and a few inches of the body were completed. Garter welts tend to spread width-wise, and to counteract that I cast on 90% of the stitches, then increased to 100% for the body. The colour is Frangipani ‘Dark Navy’ and the pattern is again from one of the Johnston photos. It’s one of the earlier photographs and shows two ganseys with moss stitch variations on the yokes. This gansey will be a re-creation of the right hand garment.
Two yoked ganseys c late 1870s. (c) The Johnston Collection
Firstly, thank you all for your get well wishes. The aches and pains has gone, to be replaced by itchiness. I take this as a good sign. The dressings have been changed daily, and the nurses seemed pleased, saying the wound ‘is very dry’. My appointment with the surgeon was Friday, and he seemed pleased too. The dressing will now be changed every other day, and I am allowed to wash my hair. I can even get it cut, if the hairdresser is comfortable with it. Additionally, the surgeon didn’t a skin graft was necessary. I’m hoping that following the NHS advice to stay hydrated and have vitamin C and protein in your diet has helped.
Fascinating foam
When I haven’t been walking back and forth to the surgery, I’ve been crawling around on the floor, laying out the fabric for the denim jacket mentioned a few weeks ago. The facing layer was cut first, reasoning that if mistakes were made, there was spare fabric. Then I tackled the outer fabric, which was a finite resource. The layout was complicated by some of the pieces needing a single layer layout – only one piece cut at a time instead of two. By laying out as efficiently as possible, there is possibly enough fabric left for the optional hood, which can be made at a later date.
Thistle
This all takes more time than it probably should. One reason was that a multi-sized paper pattern was used, and I’m averse to cutting one size and losing the information for the other sizes. Consequently, it is necessary to trace the pattern pieces onto the fabric. Added to this, various design details need to be marked. But dressmakers’ chalk tends to rub off, pins fall out, and pen markings would show, so my preferred method is tailors’ tacks made by hand with thread and needle. Then, when I was ready to sew, I discovered that the fusible interfacing still needed to be cut. Thankfully, that did not take long.
Vacuum-packed
Design decisions needed to be made, too. The pattern calls for snaps, but I couldn’t find any I liked and went for buttons instead, which was another excuse to scour the internet. Then, what style of buttonhole – machine, hand, bound? I chose a sturdy bound style, which are done by machine when the jacket is nearly complete.
Rose & bud
And the gansey? The knitting was complete a week ago, and since then has been patiently waiting to be blocked until the foam mats are freed from fabric cutting duties. This finally occurred on Sunday, when I spent more time on the floor pinning it out. The ribs on the body have spread and the patterned ribs can be better seen. If you spot any mistakes in the yoke, don’t tell me.
There will be no blog for the next two weeks, and possibly the two weeks after that. I’m slipping the bounds of Caithness again, first to a bamboo pipe course in France, and then to Aberdeen for the handbell symposium. Stay cool and keep on knitting!
This week has been busier than last week, for a change. For the most part, it’s been busy doing nothing, and this is intentional. For last Tuesday, I had day case surgery on my scalp. I’d been to the local hospital for a biopsy at the end of May. Then the hospital phoned a fortnight ago to say they had an opening in their surgery schedule, would I like the appointment? At this stage, I hadn’t received the results of the biopsy, which was read over the phone. The biopsy had revealed a basal cell carcinoma, which does not spread but needs excision.
Another sunny day
The surgery was done under local anaesthetic, which was topped up regularly whenever I said, ‘Ouch!’. Mostly, though, I didn’t feel anything but could hear the hair being shaved and the zap of the cauterisation tool. The surgeon said the lesion was large at about 1 cm, and a 4 mm margin also needed to be removed, creating a wound of nearly 2 cm (that’s 0.79”). Near the end of the procedure, the surgeon recommended a skin graft because the skin on my scalp wasn’t stretchy enough for the edges of the wound to meet. He also added that a graft could be done at a later date, using skin from an arm. In the meantime, he re-shaped the wound to draw the incision closer together, and I’m hoping I won’t need a graft.
Swirls of foam
The procedure took an hour and a half. Afterwards, the nurses did their best to clean up my hair, joking about the ‘pink rinse’. The incision has been stitched with both dissolvable and non-dissolvable sutures, and on top of it there’s a giant gel/gauze dressing stuck to my scalp. On top of that are more gauze pads, held in place with stretchy gauze strips. For the first few days, the strips were tightly bound around my forehead with criss-cross strips to hold the dressings in place. This was uncomfortable, making it difficult to get my glasses on and off and putting pressure on my temples. However, the dressings are changed daily, and we changed to having the gauze around my chin, which is much more comfortable. There hasn’t been any bleeding; day to day, there’s been no change in the wound except for the better. The nurses say everything is looking good. I see the surgeon again on Wednesday.
The surgery set me back far more than I’d anticipated. On first day this was understandable, but I was very tired the following days too, and am only now getting some energy back. On the positive side, I’m out of the house every day because I need to get the dressing changed at the surgery. The pain is manageable too – it’s mostly a dull ache, except when I raise my eyebrows.
Because I’ve been lazing around doing as little as possible, the knitting has taken a hit. Even so, only about 20 rows remain until the cuff, and the gansey, is finished! If I’d been told that I’d finish a gansey in 11 weeks, I’d have been incredulous.
Another quiet week has slipped into history, drifting down the stream of time with few events poking above the surface. One of these was the dress I’d been making, which is a few stitches away from being finished. When one of the lapels is tacked down to keep it in place becomingly, it will be complete.
Sea View
The fabric for the next project, a lightweight jacket, has been washed and dried. The fabric for it, a mid-weight tufted denim, immediately caught my eye when I saw it online. One of my hurdles to jump in this project, was when I found a shortfall of over half a meter in the amount of fabric I had compared to the amount required. Over the past few days I’ve figured out that I bought the fabric to make a different jacket. Another hurdle was that the fronts on the jacket are cut double, which won’t work with this fabric. Online reviews mentioned this, and it had puzzled me. But these reviews also pointed to a way forward – line the jacket with a lighter fabric. Fortunately, there was the remains of a large cotton sheet from another project in stash. Lining the jacket should both conserve the outer fabric and simplify construction.
Thorny galaxy
Saturday’s handbells was a whole day practice. Many of us are going to a ‘handbell symposium’ in Aberdeen at the beginning of August, and got together to practice the ten massed ringing pieces and the ‘entry’ music. The massed ringing pieces were provided by some of the countries attending – ringers are coming from as far away as Singapore. The ‘entry’ piece, an arrangement of the Skye Boat Song, will be played by Scottish ringers as the representatives of the various countries progress into the hall. We practiced nearly all of the pieces, and it was a long and tiring day.
Rosa rugosa
The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed from the photo of the gansey that the two stitch markers have been removed. When I started to pick up the stitches for the second sleeve, I noticed that the adjacent shoulder strap was different to that of the first shoulder. The patterning matched, but was reversed. Somehow or other – inattention, I expect – one shoulder strap was worked from the armhole edge to the centre, and the other from the neck edge to the armhole. The only solution seemed to be to rip back the 2nd shoulder strap and reknit it. Fortunately, the 2nd strap was worked from the neck edge to the armhole, which meant it was a doddle to frog. The last few rows were left in place because the neck ribbing was already complete. Serendipitously, the stitch-marked stitches were directly below the frogged shoulder strap, meaning the two offending stitches could be laddered, corrected, and knit back up. All told, the strap was re-knit during a shift at the museum, and the corrections took another hour or two. Currently the 2nd sleeve is well under way, with the gusset just completed.
As I write, I’m sitting in my office in the attic. In summer, this is the hottest place in the house; in winter, the coldest. However, it’s warm enough today that I opened the windows in the bedroom to let the fresh air of summer in and the stale air out.
The weather this past week has been, as a friend from Kent says, ‘tower bridge’: up and down. There has been cool cloudy weather and hot sunny weather. There have been prolonged spells of thunder and lightning, thankfully not directly overhead. There has been heavy rain too, and gardeners were grateful.
Field of buttercups
I returned to the museum on Monday for more gansey charting. I figured out a chart for the machine knit pattern mentioned last week, which will need to be test knit to ensure it’s do-able. That was followed by the start of a chart for a gansey with a fetching pattern of vertical zigzags and hearts. The zigzags are generally called ‘marriage lines’ in the gansey world, but I prefer the more descriptive ‘zigzags’. The hearts are unique in the Johnston negatives, not appearing in any of the other photos.
Late may blossom
I’m still working on that chart, trying to get the ‘frequency’ of the patterns right. Another way to put it would be I’m trying to make sure the relationship between the repeats in the different panels is correct. While it’s easy enough to see the number of repeats in each panel, getting 12 repeats of one panel to end at the same time as 13 repeats of the other panel can take some experimentation. When the chart is done, I’ll add it to the short list of what to knit next.
Riverside path
I’ve been dodging the showers this week by simply staying indoors. I did get out for one walk, however, and luckily the rain held off until I was walking up the front path. As always, there’s plenty to do indoors, and I’ve been working on another sewing project. It’s a complicated shirtdress pattern, made more difficult by sometimes-puzzling instructions. Yet it’s more likely I’m not reading them carefully, skimming, wanting to rush ahead. Things become clear if I slow down, read carefully, look at the diagrams properly, and duplicate the diagrams with the garment itself. There were a few panicky days when I found I’d cut the fronts wrong way round – what should be the right is now the left front. This could cause problems because the left and right fronts of skirt and bodice are different, and wouldn’t fit together if, for instance, the skirt were cut properly and the bodice wasn’t. Happily, I seem to have cut the skirt fronts the wrong way round too, as the pieces matched.
Bloomin’ grass
While the sewing project has been tower bridge, the gansey is coming along nicely. The sleeve patterning is finished, ending at a good stopping place. Beneath it, there’s a narrow border of small moss stitch diamonds flanked by bands of garter stitch. This border is an interpretation of what seems to be in the glass plate negative, which is difficult to interpret on the damaged plate.
I’m back from my travels, and have also recovered from the adventure, returning home a week ago Sunday. Both segments of the trip – the bamboo pipe course and the handbell shindig – were tiring in their own way.
