Gansey Nation

The game’s afoot, as Sherlock Holmes used to say. Well, Sherlock, I’ve got news for you: so’s my gansey. (In fact it’s nearer 13 inches than a foot now, but let that pass.)

This rate of progress shows I’m back in the groove – two rows a night, more at weekends. This means an hour a night, give or take, and I usually knit while listening to music or an audiobook; if I try to knit this sort of pattern while watching TV I make mistakes. But as the old saying goes, many drops wear away the stone; it’s surprising how the rows mount up.

It was my birthday on Sunday (I’m 55, but requesting time off for good behaviour) and it snowed.  Snowed. We drove out to Staxigoe harbour and all it needed was an iceberg or two and some penguins for David Attenborough to cover the Arctic section of his next series without having to renew his passport. (I thought I saw a polar bear but it turned out to be a pensioner in a fur coat; luckily for her I’d forgot my harpoon.)

More proof, if any were needed, that I’ve been assigned Laurel and Hardy as my guardian angels. My optician called me in last week for peripheral vision tests, as he’s concerned I might have glaucoma. Over lunch I got something in my eye, and reached for a cotton bud and some of Margaret’s contact lens saline solution to rinse it with; except, and you’ll laugh when you read this, with my eye watering and my vision blurred I took down her acid cleaning solution instead. Then I scrupulously rinsed the bud with it and proceeded to swab out my eye.

Staxigoe

After I’d finished pushing the boundaries of modern dance, hopping about the bathroom making a noise like a wet thumb on a hot kettle, I prised open my burning eyelids and peered inside. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen an eye that’s been rinsed in cleaning solution? Imagine Peter Lorre using a piece of beetroot as a contact lens for a joke, or the quivering, slimy horror inside a Dalek’s metal armour; a sort of pinky-red poached egg stared back at me.

I pass over the subsequent interview with the optician. Suffice it to say that the pain of having to confess what I’d done far exceeded that of the actual accident; and even the confirmation that I’m being referred to the hospital for further tests pales in comparison. In fact, if you open a window and listen carefully, you can probably still hear him laughing…

Finally this week, Judit has sent me a brilliant link https://www.patternfish.com/patterns/20898-provenance-knits-whitby-warmers which I won’t spoil for you – you’ll have to click it and see.

And in other parish news, Nigel has sent pictures of his completed Flamborough gansey. It’s a really effective combination of cables, moss and diamonds, and warmest congratulations to Nigel – it’s excellent.

Well, what a difference a few days can make! We spent the week before Easter at my parents’ house in the Midlands: the main Wick-Northampton superhighway passes through the Cairngorms, and on the way down we had about a hundred miles of snow to contend with in temperatures of -1ºC. (Just past Inverness we ran into something of a blizzard, crawling along at about 20 mph with fat snowflakes smacking into the windshield like a ghostly flock of kamikaze sparrows.)

But when we came back just five days later the weather had broken and it was 20º, and we breezed through the Highlands in our shirtsleeves with the windows open, watching the buzzards wheeling against clear blue skies high above the forests, holding out our hands to let butterflies alight on them, that kind of thing. Temperatures got so warm that for a time we had to tape together two of our Caithness thermometers just to find out how hot it was.

It’s all changed back again now, and there’s a sharp north wind with rain spattering the window as I type, but change is definitely in the air; it may still feel like winter, but it looks like spring. And who knows—short-sleeved shirts may once again be part of my life. (If my toes didn’t resemble rheumatic parsnips I’d even consider dusting off the old sandals, but out of respect for my fellow men I’ll hold off for now.)

A new season, a new project: this time, it’s a traditional Flamborough gansey in Frangipani Claret yarn. I’ve always found the patterns of the north-east of England to be among the very finest, a perfect combination of aesthetics and function. And after all the fine detail of the Wick gansey, I wanted to knit something simple—where I didn’t have to study the chart every three minutes—and, of course, it was time for another pattern with cables.

The body consists of 364 stitches, and the pattern alternates diamond panels with moss stitch and cables. (I’ll hopefully post a pattern chart next week, but—get me—I haven’t actually drawn one up yet; that’s how easy it is!)

Finally this week, Judit’s been busy again, with a jumper that cleverly uses old yarn in coloured pattern bands. As she says, ”The colours are those of the sky, blue with white and gray clouds. I put a little flower on it, just a sign of spring.” It’s a very effective combination, with something of a nautical air about it, too—and, of course, perfect for the changing of the seasons…

There was a partial eclipse last week, and we were fortunate that the clouds parted just enough to let us see the sun reduced to a brilliant golden crescent. In fact, the clouds added to the spectacle, roiling furiously around the eclipse like smoke, as though some vast celestial weapon was being forged in the heavens.

In olden times, people thought of eclipses as harbingers of mighty events; and this is still the case today, as I bring you tidings of great joy: for lo, the Wick gansey is complete.

Ye Eclipse

I still have the ends to darn in, and then it has to be washed and blocked, but those are mere details. It’s done as done, the best use of a leftover stash of navy yarn as I can think of. We’re going to take a break over Easter as we go down south to visit my parents, but we’ll put up pictures of the blocked and bedarned gansey next Monday to round off this project.

Before then I have to pay a visit to the doctor’s to get my ears syringed. I’d never really thought much about earwax till now; it’s just been there, like nature’s play dough. In fact, as a result of reading a particular horror story as a child, I’d always assumed it’s main purpose was to act as a barrier so that tropical caterpillars couldn’t crawl inside your ear and lay its eggs in your brain.

New Keiss Castle

Now for no reason at all mine has caused me to go partly deaf, or makes a sound inside my head like a slug crawling over a microphone; it affects my sense of balance so that I tend to walk like someone crossing Niagara Falls on a unicycle. Sometimes it partially melts in the night and I awake to the sound of bursting bubbles, as though Fairy Earwax had paid me a visit and was sticking her index finger in her mouth and popping it out at me with a wet smack. (Sometimes I swear I can hear sniggering in the darkness.)

The cure isn’t much better, to be frank, consisting of a pressurised jet of water fired into the ear in the hopes of flushing out the offending substance, along with any caterpillar eggs that may be lodged in there, loose bits of brain, that sort of thing. Isn’t growing old fun?

Still, once it’s over I’ll be able to start rebuilding my life, planning the next project. Time to revisit an old favourite, I think—and looking at the dregs of my teacup and swirling the leaves, I think I can see cables coming back into my life after a long break…