Gansey Nation

It’s that time of year again, as the event that brings together a divided nation and uplifts the spirits of a people is finally here. No, I’m not talking about Wimbledon, or the first cricket test of the summer; nor even about the arrival of the funfair at the bottom of our garden for the county show. No, it’s time to rejoice in the annual Diagram prize for the oddest book title of the year.

This year’s shortlist reminds me that the universe is far more strange and disturbing place than I’d supposed: An Ape’s View of Evolution competes with titles such as The Commuter Pig-Keeper, Love Your Lady Landscape, and Renniks Australian Pre-Decimal and Decimal Coin Errors. (The bookies’ favourite, Nipples on My Knee, a memoir of keeping sheep, I dismiss as simply trying too hard).

Every now and then, when I feel oppressed by the existential burden of modern life, I cheer myself up by flicking through the list of previous winners. My two all-time favourites remain The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories (2000) and Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice (1978), though I do have a soft spot for Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers (1996).

In gansey news I can at last reveal what I’ve done with the shoulder straps: I’ve opted for the fancy knit-a-cable-at-right-angles-along-the-shoulder-and-down-the-sleeve approach. It works stunningly well with this pattern—I plan to try it on a Flamborough gansey too one of these days, since the principle is the same—even though it can be a bit fiddly, feeling at times rather like performing an intimate act on an octopus with the giggles.

I’m not exactly firing on all cylinders just now—today I got dressed, felt something wasn’t quite right, looked down and discovered I’d put on two pairs of underwear, so you can see I’m not exaggerating—so it’s with something of relief that next week we turn to simpler matters, like sleeves.

TECHNICAL STUFF (WARNING: MATHS AHEAD. POSSIBLY COSINES)

A couple of inches up the shoulder

These shoulder straps are the business, but to achieve the desired effect you do have to plan ahead.

First of all, you need to remember that you get more rows per inch than you do stitches: I knit about 11 rows per inch vertically, and 8 stitches per inch horizontally. So if you’re going to knit this sort of shoulder strap you need to decrease the number of stitches you’ll be picking up, or else your finished shoulder strap will buckle like a switchback. I know of two ways of doing this: either decrease the number of stitches for the shoulder on your last row on the yoke, or else decrease as you work down the shoulder casting off. (There are pros and cons to each method; in this case I decreased on my final row, by 11 stitches, from 63 to 52 for the shoulder).

Further progress up the shoulder

Secondly, because this pattern features a cable which is crossed every 7th row, I want to end each shoulder with a cable 6/7 completed—so that when I pick up stitches around the armhole for the sleeve it will be this cable’s 7th row, meaning that I can cross the cable and so complete the sequence. The whole point of this, of course, is that all the other cables on the sleeve will start on the row after the pick-up row—this ensures that my central cable is aligned with all the others, and the next cable sequence for the centre cable will start the row after as well.

Now, you have to remember that each row of your shoulder strap knits together/casts off one stitch from one needle only. So, the first row (which goes right side up from right to left) reaches the end and casts off one stitch from, say, the the needle holding the back shoulder. The next row (working on the reverse side) casts off one stitch from the other needle. And so on. To calculate how many rows you have to knit for your shoulder, therefore, you have to add together the stitches on both needles. I have 52 stitches on each side—that means that my shoulder will consist of 104 rows.

Ready to knit the two stitches (shoulder strap and yoke/shoulder) together on a reverse row…

By a happy coincidence 104 rows gives me 14 cables (each cable = 7 rows) plus 6 rows left over. (OK, it took me the best part of an hour’s calculation to get this to work. I did the calculation before I decided how many stitches to decrease by at the very beginning.)

Now we’re ready to start.

…and knitting the two stitches together on a right-side-up row

The process is simple enough. First of all, place your yoke/shoulder stitches on two needles, as if you were going to do a 3-needle bind-off. Cast on the requisite number of stitches for the shoulder strap. I cast on 24 (22 for the central cable and flanking pattern, plus a border stitch at each side). It’s easiest to do this using just the two needles you already have lined up with shoulder stitches on—trying to knit the strap with a third needle at right angles is like trying to play two deflated sets of bagpipes simultaneously.

Finished shoulder strap

Then, working back and forth, one row right side up, the next working on the reverse, knit the shoulder strap at right angles to the shoulders, and at the end of every row, knit together the last stitch of the shoulder strap and the next stitch from the yoke/shoulder. As you work down the shoulder you will gradually cast off all the stitches on each needle—the effect is not unlike doing up a zipper.

It’s not something you can dash off quickly. If you think about it, I was knitting 104 rows of 24 stitches each—that’s a total of just under 2,500 stitches. It’s the equivalent of 6 or 7 full rows of the body per shoulder (out of curiosity I weighed the yarn I used—it came to 28 grams per shoulder).

Anyway, it’s totally worth it, as you can see. And yes, there is slight switchback effect on the shoulder even now; but the gansey hasn’t been blocked yet, and part of that is due to the cables on the body pulling it in. It will look better blocked—everything always does.

Britain has been basking in unusually hot weather for the time of year. All over the country records have been tumbling—ice creams melting in the cone, unshorn sheep fainting in the fields, people not bothering to turn on the cooker but instead cooking dinner on the doorstep—and I’m pleased to report that Wick has been no exception. Last weekend, we set a new record temperature for June: a whopping 21ºC (or 69.8ºF). This really tells you all you need to know about life in Caithness.

Flecks of foam on the river

We’re paying for it now, of course. The winds are gusting up to 45 mph, we’re getting the sort of rainfall that would have had Noah tapping his barometer and looking thoughtful, and it’s a brisk 13ºC. The grass is standing high in the fields and the wind ripples through it as though armies of tiny pixies (such as Terry Pratchett’s wonderful Nac Mac Feegles) are on the march. Sometimes when I look up I see a crow exactly balanced against a fulcrum of opposite forces, perfectly motionless against the wind, as though the Creator had pinned it there while He got on with something more challenging, such as the questions of free will or why men have nipples, and simply forgot all about it.

Peony seedhead

Meanwhile in gansey news I have reached the momentous stage of dividing front and back, with the gussets completed to the halfway stage and safely tucked on holders. And I can now reveal that the pattern is the wonderful Mrs Laidler’s of Whitby, a real classic and possibly my very favourite gansey pattern of all. It’s not especially difficult, so long as you can remember which row you’re on, but it knits up a treat. Navy yarn seems to suit it particularly, too—when the light catches it just so it shines like a monochrome persian carpet, or illuminated manuscript. I am, you can probably guess, a fan.

TECHNICAL STUFF

There will be 6 cables panels of 20 stitches on the front and back, with 5 flags of 13 stitches in between (an 11-stitch flag with a plain stitch either side).

To give me the right number of stitches I increased by 6 stitches per side on the first row of the cable pattern. This is the first time I’ve done this to any extent: it’s to compensate for the way the cables tend to pull in the pattern in and make the gansey  narrower. The more cables you have, the narrower your yoke will be, and an increase of one stitch per cable is a way of counteracting this effect. And as I was going to have 6 cables, I thought I’d better do something about it or else lose weight fast. (On reflection, the extra stitches seemed easier…)