It’s generally been another dull week, with one exception, which occurred on Saturday. As usual, there was a handbell practice in the morning. One of the other ringers texted early in the morning offering a lift, which I accepted. It meant that I’d be late for lunch with friend S, as I’d have to get home and head out again instead of going straight from bells. Accordingly, I let her know.
So far, so good. When I arrived home, I switched activity bags – knitting in the car, bell stuff out – and set off. S lives in the upland countryside outside Thurso, and the only roads are single track with passing places. I bounced around and through potholes until I met an oncoming car less than half a mile from her house. I’d just gone by a passing place and decided to reverse into it.
Shadows behind the church gate
This is where things went rather wrong. I couldn’t see the layby in the reversing cameras and misjudged where it was. As a result, I slowly, almost elegantly, backed the car into the roadside ditch. After attempts to go forward and back, I realised it was bootless. With the car resting at an angle, its nose buried in the gully, I pondered what to do. The car I’d pulled over for had stopped, and the driver asked if I was alright. I phoned S to update her. While on the phone, one of her neighbours was passing, and volunteered to stop by S’s. After that, every passing car asked if I were o.k. Plans were hatched by S and her friends, the first being to get in touch with local farmers and the second being to call a recovery service.
‘Nuff said.
Shortly after this, S arrived and then a local farmer appeared. He didn’t think he could shift the car, and recommended contacting a recovery company, which he helpfully did. The first company wasn’t available, the second didn’t have the personnel, but the third would come by S’s after they finished another job. That being settled, S & I returned to hers for lunch and a big mug of tea.
The recovery company duly called at the house to get the car keys, and almost exactly three hours after the incident, the car was parked outside S’s house. The car was undamaged, but they said that there was a tin can between the wheel and the disc brake, which made a noise when driven. He thought that it would eventually wear down and drop out. We went to the car to have a look. When he put his hand in the wheel to show me, he realised he could compress it, and it fell out. And that’s the saga of Saturday. Boneheaded driving, but the car is fine, and I am fine, apart from embarrassment.
Grater and spoon
Because I was at S’s longer than usual, I got lots of knitting done. So much, in fact, that when I left I was an inch into the cuff of the second sleeve. With concentrated effort on Sunday morning, I finished the cuff and darned in the ends. I’ll block it this week. For the next project, I’m taking a break from ganseys and jumping on the red hat bandwagon. But mine will be a red hood with attached cape. The pattern is ‘Nottingham’ by Nim Teasdale, available on Ravelry.
I’m back home after my trip south. It was only 12 days, but felt longer. The burgeoning of Spring was apparent further south, where the hedges along the motorways were starting to sprout with green. The signs of Spring here are quieter; the leaves on the roses are starting to grow, as are the buds on the clematis. Another sure sign of the turning season is the sudden blossoming of ‘For Sale’ signs on local houses. Our neighbours’ is one; they are moving to England after two decades in Caithness.
New growth on the rosebush
The primary purpose of my trip was to attend a short course on making and playing bamboo pipes at Cadhay Manor, near Exeter in Devon. In this beautiful venue, a small group four pipers and five recorder players made and played pipes. Most of the recorder players were completely new to pipes, and took to it like ducks to water. Two attendees had travelled from the US specifically for the course. It was an intensive few days, and far too short. We’d barely begun before it was over.
Cadhay Manor
After the course I visited friends in Southport and Edinburgh. In Southport, we did lots of nothing, which is what I needed after an intensive few days. Our only activity dropping off Gordon’s stereo for repair in the town centre, as it had failed over the past few years. In the evenings, as my friend hadn’t seen it, we binge-watched ‘Ted Lasso’. I enjoyed re-watching it and caught up on my knitting.
Rhododendron
The next stop was Edinburgh. I visited the ‘Botanics’, the Royal Botanic Gardens of Edinburgh, and had a wander round. It wasn’t particularly warm, but it was mostly sunny. The daffodils were blooming, as were some late snowdrops. The rhododendrons were starting too, with large flowers of white, pink or red. I had a good wander around, finding a few nooks I hadn’t seen before, and ended with lunch at the café.
Sculptures at the Botanics
After that, I visited an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery of the photos of Alfred Buckham. Mostly taken in the 1910s-30s, these are aerial landscapes taken from open cockpit planes. He refused to wear a seatbelt and leant over the side of the plane with his glass plate camera, after having tied one leg to the seat! He is best known for his composite photos, the most famous of which is an aerial view of Edinburgh Castle, with a biplane flying over it. The negatives of the castle, clouds, and plane were combined in a print to form the final image. All editing was done on the print, not the plate, as was usual at the time. He meticulously catalogued and stored his plates for future use.
Spiral staircase at Cadhay
While I lost a few days’ knitting while at the course, I did manage to catch up during my visits. The first sleeve was finished and the stitches for the second picked up before I went away. Now, the pattern bands on the second sleeve are nearly finished, and then it will be plain sailing with k5 p1 to the k2 p2 cuff. This gansey seems to have sped along. If I keep it up, it may be finished in under four months.
This week, I am pleased to say that the computer is sorted out. Everything is back where it should be. The most difficult application to rectify was Lightroom, where the program hadn’t been able to open the photo catalog. This is not a disaster, as the catalog does not contain the photos themselves. Various internet remedies were tried, most of which involved putting the catalog in another location or changing the file permissions. Modifying permissions on the Lightroom folder didn’t work, but I was able to connect the program to a different copy of the catalog. Finally, I thought to change the permissions on the folder where Lightroom resides, and Bingo!
Glorious Sunshine
With the weather being vastly improved, I’ve been able to go on a couple of walks. The foothpaths run east or west. East is towards the harbour, and there are two choices – either along the North Head path or along the South Head path. The North Head path goes along the top of the cliffs, past the North Baths, the WWII gun emplacement, and the ‘Soldiers’ Tower’ monument. The South Head path starts at the harbour‘s end and continues past the lifeboat shed and the old quarry. At the end, there’s a stairway up the cliffside where the path continues to the Trinkie pool and the Castle of Old Wick. Both North and South Head paths are part of the John o’Groats Trail, which runs from Inverness to John o’Groats.
Gnarly Hawthorn
The path towards the west starts at the edge of town and follows the edges of fields for about a mile and a half, where it ends in a hillock. The wide margin of marsh between the farmland and river means there’s only a few places where the river is directly alongside. This path more often taken, partly because it’s more scenic, and also because the prevailing wind comes from the west, and I like to head out into the wind and come back with it.
Lybster Lighthouse
The Gansey Group in Lybster met again this week. It’s a welcome extra session of knitting, as I sometimes must skip knitting in the evenings when I’m out. One of the ladies was wearing ‘Wick Leaf’, which we published in The Knitter magazine a few years ago. She had made it in Herring Girl Pink, which showed the pattern extremely well. It’s a nice pink, too – pink without being brash or girly.
Lichen on willow
The sleeve on the current gansey is well under way now, and I am very pleased with the progress. The four pattern bands, which come down to the forearm, are finished, and they follow the same order as the bands in the yoke. This means that, serendipitously, the pattern at the start of the sleeve matches the first band on the yoke. The yoke band ends at the centre of the gusset, and the sleeve band begins there.
For the next two weeks, I’m slipping the bonds of Caithness and am heading south for a bamboo pipe workshop in Devon. On the way, I’ll be visiting friends. See you on the other side, and enjoy the spring weather.
A slightly late blog this week because I am laid low with computer problems. They’re completely of my own making. I won’t bore you with details but suffice it to say that I deleted a lot of data to clear space on the drive. I hoped that should I need to, the data would be easily accessible again through backups, but it hasn’t been that straightforward. The backups are there, but the computer takes a long time to put everything back in place. While I wait for files to shift from A to B, I find other things to do so it can work without interruptions.
Back yard snowdrops
The weather this week is finally shifting towards spring. It feels like it has been a very long time coming. A few mornings ago, I heard a bird singing, always a sure sign of the changing season. The snowdrops in the back yard are in full bloom, and I’m happy to see that they are spreading. Daffodils are pushing up along the river side.
Lybster lighthouse
The small Gansey group who meet a few miles down the road started up again this week after a break while the venue was closed. We got to talking about words and the names of things. One of the questions was, where does the word “gansey” originate? The answer seems to be “lost in the mists of time“, but it possibly has a Nordic origin. A very similar word is used for a pullover in Scandinavia and from the north of England up to Scotland. This led to one of the women mentioning that in Egypt the word for beer is “buza”, and of course she wondered if that was the origin of the English “booze”. The trusty Oxford English dictionary is mute on whether this is the origin of the word, but it first appears in English in the 14th century, as a verb meaning “To drink deeply, or for the sake of enjoyment or goodfellowship”. In the 18th century, it began to be used as a noun. Another OnLine source traces its origin to germanic languages.
The old Lifeboat House from above
As I’m not much one for boozing, I have been soberly knitting the gansey. I’ve done the tedious picking up of stitches around the armhole for the first sleeve. The ratio that seems to work best is two stitches per three rows. Using this ratio, 72 stitches on front and back were picked up, plus 24 for the shoulder strap. The shoulder straps were knit from the armhole edge to the neck, starting with the magic cast on from Knitty. The advantage of doing it this way is that there are live stitches at both ends of the shoulder strap. The sleeve will have the same patterning as the yoke and body, ending with a ribbed cuff.
I opened the curtains several days ago to a sight that has rarely been seen for the past month – wall-to-wall sunshine. As well as the glorious brightness, the wind had dropped too. Although it had shifted to a northerly, there was some warmth in the sun. Crocuses have started to pop up alongside the snowdrops, and the yellow blooms of winter aconite are nodding above their Kermit-like collars. Knowing how fickle weather can be, I’ve got my fingers crossed – sleet and ice are in the forecast. At least the hope of Spring is out there.
Snowdrops and crocus
Except on Friday, when I opened the curtains to a blizzard. It was quite exciting for a few moments. It soon tailed off, and by the time I went out for a walk, the snow had disappeared except in shaded, sheltered nooks. Having grown up in New England, the winters here always seem half-hearted. A few inches here or there, and the snow has usually melted within a few days. Hence the excitement when it looked like it might actually accumulate.
No raindrops on the window this week
Later that morning, being sleep deprived, I did something very stupid. I forgot to put the water in the bottom of my little moka coffee pot, something that happens occasionally. Thinking I could quickly open and fill it, I unclipped the top while it was on the burner. Silly me, I’d completely overlooked that the contents were under pressure. Water and coffee grounds exploded everywhere – the stove, the floor, me. I was lucky to avoid being scalded. After a quick mop-up of the stove and a trip to the washing machine, coffee was made successfully. I’ll be more careful next time.
Curious
St Valentine’s Day rolled around last week. Like Christmas, birthdays, and anniversaries, it’s one of those days where you reflect on what you had and what you’ve lost. Going around the supermarket with all its heart-laden displays still makes my heart heavy. I decided to celebrate instead of pine, and bought a box of chocolates, choosing one of Gordon’s favourites.
Between extra online meetings and orchestra practice, I’ve had limited knitting time this week. I try to catch up when I can by having longer sessions with a talking book. The shoulder straps have been completed and there’s only a few rows to go on the neck. The original plan for the straps had been to repeat the yoke patterning. I was two-thirds done the first shoulder strap when I decided that it just wasn’t working. The moss and diamonds were too large to fit neatly on the strap’s width and length. For the second attempt, I used only moss stitch. While it isn’t like the original photo, moss stitch shoulders appear in other gansey photos.
It’s generally been another dull week, with one exception, which occurred on Saturday. As usual, there was a handbell practice in the morning. One of the other ringers texted early in the morning offering a lift, which I accepted. It meant that I’d be late for lunch with friend S, as I’d have to get home and head out again instead of going straight from bells. Accordingly, I let her know.
