Flamborough: Week 8 – 19 June

In Twelfth Night, Feste, an experienced weather forecaster, declares that “The rain it raineth every day”. But while this is usually a pretty fair description of Caithness in early summer, right now the ground’s parched. It hasn’t rained for weeks, not that proper, solid, god-fearing presbyterian rain where it just falls all day dripping from the eaves and cascading from the trees in miniature waterfalls. I mean, the ground up here’s supposed to be soft: I’m used to walking across grassy fields in Caithness in squidgy squelches, the water sometimes rising to my ankles. These days I just bounce. It’s as if we’d moved to California and I hadn’t noticed

We went up to Duncansby Stacks, those great triangular sea stacks rising up beside the cliffs like God’s Toblerone. The walk over the headland is usually pretty squishy, as though the grass isn’t anchored to earth but just floats on the water table like plankton. I keep expecting to see people roped together in case someone is sucked under in a Grimpen Mire sort of way. Not this time. The soil was dusty, watercourses you normally have to jump over were all dried up, and the sheep followed us around in hopes of catching stray drops of sweat.

Sea thrift carpeting the shore

TS Eliot probably had us in mind when he wrote, “Here is no water but only rock/ Rock and no water and the sandy road/ The road winding above among the mountains/ Which are mountains of rock without water”. Except for the rock, the sand, and the mountains, and the roads having potholes you could lose a battleship in, it’s an almost exact portrait of Caithness. But surely the dry spell can’t last for ever—this is Scotland, after all—and I see some rain is in the forecast. Till then, as Feste would say, the sun it shineth every day…

A glimmer of light in the shadow

TECHNICAL STUFF

As you will see, I’ve almost finished the front of the body. One shoulder is complete and has been joined to its counterpart at the back. (I find it easier to join the first shoulder as it is completed, rather than put it on a holder until both are ready to be joined.) The other has almost reached the shoulder strap.

The indented neckline is achieved by decreasing every other row on the inside, or neck edge. This indent is over 28 rows, so a decrease every second row means 14 decreases: so, each shoulder needle starts with an extra 14 stitches on it taken from the centre. These 14 stitches are decreased away over 28 rows, so that by the shoulder straps there will be the same number of stitches as the back (if that makes sense) And the centre needles lose 14 + 14 stitches, of course, to compensate. I find this makes a nice, rounded neckline. I usually also knit the first stitch of the decrease row, and then do the decrease on the next two: because that first stitch “disappears” when it is picked up during the foundation row of the collar, you’re left with the nicely delineated angled decrease stitches making a V to either side.

Enjoying the view from the Trinkie