Wick (Double Diamonds): Week 5 – 1 June

The first of June, and the year is nearly half over!  As we learned in school, the names of the months come from the Latin – June was named after Juno, Roman goddess of marriage, fertility, and many other roles.  The names of the days of the week also had Roman origins, but indirectly.  The Roman days were named after celestial bodies:  the sun, the moon, and the five visible planets (Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn).  This convention goes back to the Babylonians, and occurs in many languages.  When the Anglo-Saxons named their days, they used the same convention, but changed the gods involved to their own gods.  So Saturday, Sunday and Monday are still named after Saturn, the sun and the moon, but Tuesday is from Tiw, god of war (Mars), Wednesday from Woden (Mercury), Thursday from Donar (Jupiter), Friday from Frigg (Venus). 

View at the end of the path

Interestingly, in Denmark Saturday is ‘lørdag’, which comes from an old Norse word meaning ‘bath day’ or ‘washing day’.  This conjures up images of burly Vikings pausing in their looting and pillaging, setting aside their helmets, swords and shields, and climbing into steaming hot tubs.  And this is actually what they did, for the Vikings placed a high value on personal cleanliness.  Hair was regularly washed and combed, faces and hands regularly washed, and clothes were kept spotless.  A clean Viking was more socially acceptable than a slovenly one.

Waiting for chips

This past week has been quiet, so quiet that I can’t think of anything of great import.  Handbells on Saturday was different than usual in that we played in public instead of a practice.  The event was in Thurso town centre and was organised by the Thurso Community Development Trust to entertain and delight passengers from one of the large cruise ships that regularly dock at nearby Scrabster.  As well as handbells and Scottish dancers (not together!), there were craft stalls.  Cruise ship passengers and many locals strolled past; I’ve never seen Thurso so busy.  We had a slot of an hour and a half, and played our plant-related pieces three times through. 

‘View of Wick’

With the gansey, the milestone of dividing for front and back has been reached.  The achievement came quicker than originally planned.  After some thought, I re-visited the planned measurements and decided that the gansey would be too long if I adhered to them.  Thus, the gusset was started at the beginning of the week and half-finished by the end.  The pattern of diamonds is becoming apparent – alternating panels of ‘long’ and ‘short’ diamonds.  On the short diamonds, the pattern changes every row.  On the long, the pattern changes every other row, and this is what makes them ‘long’.  There are two ‘short’ diamonds for every ‘long’ one, but not exactly.  The patterning will continue to the chosen length, meaning that diamonds may be incomplete at the shoulder.  This is in accordance with the original photo, and that’s good enough for me – fewer calculations!