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 Being ‘retired’, nothing much seems to happen from day to day, and then you realise it’s next week. Things are happening, but it’s mostly background noise – buying stuff I don’t need online; cancelling landline accounts; sending long e-mails relating to my brother in law’s income; deciding to co-organise a course in the autumn and thinking about that; a day out with a friend who was having a scan at the small hospital in Dingwall.
 Distant rain The landline is for the family home in Northamptonshire. After 7 months, even though not expensive, I decided it was time to cancel. When I’m there, all the calls are the cold-call variety, trying to sell insulation or double glazing. You rush to answer the phone, only to find it’s an automated call or someone you can’t understand. So I phoned BT to cancel. The agent on the other end was surprised that the account had been open for nearly 49 years! The Reids bought the house in January 1976 and the phone was installed two months later. I thought of keeping the line on until 50 years, but it’s an unnecessary spend just to reach a milestone.
 Snowdrops The course in the autumn is not for knitting, but for making, playing and decorating bamboo pipes. The group try to run one every year, but our membership is decreasing, and it might be one of the last we’re able to hold. This year, all other possible organisers declining the privilege, I was firmly in the headlights. I’ve agreed to do it with another experienced organiser. Unless I have some brainwaves over the next few months, it’ll be much the same as the last one, which I was unable to attend due to illness.
 Staghorns The day out with a friend wasn’t really a day out, but it’s better to think of it that way than as another trip down the road for a hospital appointment. Dingwall is north of Inverness by about 15 miles and although better than going to Inverness, it’s still a two-hour drive one way. Inevitably, it brought back memories of all the trips we’d made to Inverness for hospital appointments, mostly Gordon’s but a few mine.
 Donald Gillies, August 1911.
(c) Wick Heritage Society
Used with permission The next gansey will soon be on the needles. When the swatch is dry, I’ll take measurements and do the maths. This one will be for me. About five years ago, I decided to knit a gansey for myself, using finer yarn to get a gauge more akin to what I was seeing in the Johnston photos. It took a while to find a yarn that was slightly finer and still in my price bracket – Drops BabyAlpaca Silk. Unfortunately, it has been discontinued, and I fervently hope there is enough to finish the gansey. The pattern will be based on one of the Johnston photos, with a ribbed body, and a yoke with small double cables and a bold ‘lightning’ motif in the centre. Part of the pattern is hidden by the braces, but from what is visible, there would appear to be two identical tree and diamond panels next to each other.
 Shall I start with the weather again? After a brief respite of calm weather, storm Éowyn stampeded in with the riders of Rohan at her back. While it was definitely breezy in the far north, we weren’t affected as badly as the central belt of Scotland. As far as I know, there were no power cuts, no flooding, no road blockages. But then, I heeded the warnings and stayed in that day.
And what does one do on a cold, windy, rainy day in mid winter? Hurkle-durkle, of course. This term appeared on my Facebook feed one morning, and my first reaction was, ‘This is my life!’ It’s an obsolete word from southern Scotland, popularised by the internet, meaning to cozy up in bed long after you should get up.
 Calm Sea When I’m not hurkle-durkling of a Monday morning, I go to the Wick Heritage Museum to peer at scans of photos from the Johnston Collection that contain ganseys. It’s an ongoing project I’ve been working on for the past five or six years. Initially, I edited the photos, cleaning up noise from the background or repairing ‘holes’. These ‘holes’ are plate damage, where emulsion has worn away or suffered water damage. Some of the plates are so damaged at the edges that repair of those areas is impossible.
 Colour on the quayside Because Wick was a centre for the herring industry, there are many photos of fishermen. By and large, the ganseys tend to be plain, and many, to my surprise, were machine knit. Prior to this, everything I’d read indicated that ‘ganseys were hand knit’. But this is simply not the case when looking at the photos. There are, of course, many photos of hand-knit, patterned ganseys. Some of these are ‘Sunday best’, and just as many, if not more, are simpler. In some photos, the ganseys are worn under a waistcoat, jacket, or both, with only a tiny glimpse of a gansey at the neck. Most photos have a decipherable pattern.
 Flaking slate The interpretation of these patterns into chart form is what I’ve been doing for the past year or so. Because the photos are portraits of a person and not a gansey, the quality varies. Some are so clear you can nearly count every stitch. In others, it is possible to interpret the pattern even if you can’t see the stitches. In others, the pattern is out of focus, or perhaps the sitter moved. It will take a while to get them all charted, but there have already been some interesting finds – for instance the cabled cuffs and cuffs with lace panels.
Speaking of lace, the lacy jacket is complete and stretched on the blocking boards. I had hoped to stretch it slightly more lengthways, but the i-cord edging on one of the fronts was knit too tightly. Bell sleeves are not my favourite, as the trailing edges get into everything; as a solution, an i-cord laced through the loops could be used to gather the edge and keep it out of the way.
 It’s been another quiet week, both at home and with the weather. It’s been like spring verging on summer this past week – not much wind and temperatures in the low teens C or low 50°s F. I’ve been out as much as I can, but at the moment can’t drive anywhere. The car has been out of action since Christmas. Not for anything serious – the inspection sticker expired just after Christmas, and the car won’t pass its MOT until a tiny part – the nozzle for screen wash – is replaced. And because it doesn’t have a valid inspection sticker, the annual road tax can’t be paid, and without the road tax, it’s illegal to drive. It felt quite daring to drive half a mile to the supermarket, hoping I wouldn’t be stopped. I phoned the garage on Friday, the part has arrived, and the car will be on the road again on Wednesday.
 Late Afternoon by the river All this recalls the saying, ‘for want of a nail, the kingdom was lost’. It’s a saying with a long history, because of course I looked it up. Earliest forms date back to the 13thC, the current form goes something like this:
For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the message was lost.
For want of a message the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
It’s all an instance of one thing leads to another. At least, I haven’t lost my kingdom.
 Flat Calm As it’s been an uneventful week, there’s not much to write about. Things are ticking along with Gordon’s brother’s estate, with brief flurries of activity now and then. I did get one important thing done, however – a knitting pattern we were asked to write about 18 months ago. Writing the first one, for The Knitter magazine, and been hard work, and I’ve been putting it off, pushing it forward into the future, at every opportunity. But this past week a reminder e-mail arrived, and spurred me to get it done. Much to my amazement, it came together quickly. I reused The Knitter pattern as a template, thus only needing to plug in relevant numbers and variations to the directions. The only thing left to do is to finish editing the charts. It’s destined for a book, I’ll let you know when it’s published.
As you can see from the photo of the lace jacket, I’ve come to the end of the related colours and have had to substitute a dark purple yarn. It sticks out like a sore thumb but vaguely coordinates with the other colours. I’m taking a ‘fix it feature it’ point of view – turn what seems to be a flaw into something positive.
 Sunset
 Anyone in Britain will tell you that the weather has been truly Baltic over the past week. January started with heavy rain, then continued with snow, ice, frost and freezing fog. Here in Caithness we’ve been lucky, and have only had a minimal amount of snow and ice, although it has been cold. Other parts of the UK have been badly affected.
But this morning, as if activated by a light switch, the snow and ice disappeared overnight. The weather has changed with a warm wind from the south, and the forecast for the rest of the week is positively balmy. While I like the snow and the beauty it brings, I can do without the cold.
 Snowy Skies Hunkering indoors in a blanket hoodie is a good way to avoid the chill. While doing so, I heard a word, probably in a movie, and thought, ‘where does that come from?’. The word was ‘tweezers’. With the resources of the internet at my beck and call, I did some research, and it was much more interesting than expected.
‘Tweezers’ comes from the noun ‘tweeze’. A tweeze was a case used by surgeons or barbers for carrying small instruments. ‘Tweeze’ is believed to come from French ‘etui’ (plural etuis), which was anglicised into ‘tweeze’. Today, an etui is usually a sewing box with fold-out sides – searching for ‘etui box’ will bring up many examples. Over time, the plural ‘tweezes’ became ‘tweezers’. ‘Tweezers’ first appeared in the early 1600s, and by the middle of that century was also being used to denote the instrument as well as the container. But what was the instrument called before then? The internet could not provide a definitive answer.
 Following on from last week’s word of ‘Twixmas’, today is a far older holiday – Plough Monday. It’s the first Monday after 6 January, and marks the return to work after the Christmas holidays. First recorded in the 15th century, on this day the plough was blessed, and young men would take it round the village collecting coins and sometimes performing a mumming play. The EFDSS has more information here.
Although I’ve had to unpick and reknit a row or two due to inattention, no tweezers were required. The sleeve is coming along. Unlike a gansey sleeve, where the knitting is faster as you get closer to the cuff, this is the opposite because the sleeves are bell-shaped and thus wider at the cuff. The original yarn has now been used up, and a new one started. It’s very similar in colour and weight, but it too is from a Colourmart set, and when it’s gone it’s gone. I’ll have to start digging through boxes.
 There’s a newish word I’ve been hearing on the radio for the last few years: Twixmas. Unfortunately, it doesn’t derive from the name of a popular candy bar, but from ‘betwixt’ and ‘Christmas’, and is used to denote that lazy, relaxed period between Christmas and New Year. That brief period when the TV schedules are completely out of whack, the news seems to be mostly human interest stories, and you can’t remember what day it is. It’s not found in the Oxford English Dictionary (yet). It seems to be an up-and-coming word, being used more frequently year by year. It certainly is easier than saying ‘the week between Christmas and New Year’.
 Speaking of Christmas, my friend and I had a relaxed day. We lounged about in our ‘at home’ clothes, nibbled on crisps and dip, had Chinese food from the supermarket for Christmas dinner, listened to The Christmas Revels, and imbibed wine, drinking a toast to absent friends. And solved first world problems and got some knitting done.
New Year’s Eve was also quiet. I stayed in, and hadn’t planned to stay up until midnight but miscalculated the length of our traditional New Year’s Eve DVD – The Mikado by Opera Australia. It was just as well I’d had no plans – the weather was stormy and wet, with many outdoor celebrations cancelled or delayed at the last minute.
Snowdrops January 5th or 6th is Twelfth Night, depending on when you start counting, and is the day that signals the end of the Christmas season, when decorations are tucked into their boxes, cards taken off the mantlepiece, strings of lights carefully coiled and stowed away. Christmas wassailing is over, but there is still time to wassail your apple trees to fend off evil spirits and to ensure they thrive.
If only there were a ceremony or ritual to make painful memories happier ones. I can’t help but remember that this time last year Gordon’s memorial service took place, and a few days later, it was the last time I saw his brother. ‘The first year is the hardest’ has been extended to perhaps ‘the first 18 months are the hardest’.
 Winter Sunset This is where knitting comes in, which at least is a distraction. The first sleeve of the lacy jacket is finished, and the second begun. As I got nearer and nearer the bottom of the sleeve, I realised that a game of yarn chicken on the second sleeve was in the offing. It’s going to be close, really close. I’ve found some other yarn in the stash that won’t look too out of place and is approximately the right weight. Buying more isn’t an option, because the yarn is an off-cone set from Colourmart. I’d need to buy a full cone to replace any of the colours, and the last thing I need is more yarn.
Happy New Year to you all! May it be cheerful, productive, and above all, better than 2024.
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Being ‘retired’, nothing much seems to happen from day to day, and then you realise it’s next week. Things are happening, but it’s mostly background noise – buying stuff I don’t need online; cancelling landline accounts; sending long e-mails relating to my brother in law’s income; deciding to co-organise a course in the autumn and thinking about that; a day out with a friend who was having a scan at the small hospital in Dingwall.
