I’ve been thinking a lot about borders recently: frontiers, marches, edges and liminal spaces. Partly this was inspired by a visit to Ousdale broch, which lies on the coast near the Caithness-Sutherland border. You park in a lay-by off the main road, and then follow a path which winds lazily down towards the sea for about a mile and a quarter. This gentle slope lulls you into a false sense of security, as the only hazards you have to face are the numerous fewmets left by the sheep that graze there, and you enjoy the solitude and the scenery, relishing the unspoiled landscape. Coming back, however, is another matter: before you’re halfway up the return slope you’re damning the unspoiled scenery to blazes and wondering why no one has installed a funicular railway.
The path to the broch
The location of the broch is pretty special, on tree-shrouded cliffs just above the point where the Allt a’ Bhurg burn joins the the Ousdale burn as it flows into the sea. Ousdale is Old Norse for Oystein’s Valley, suggesting that it was originally settled by a Yiddish-speaking Viking, while Allt a’ Bhurg is Gaelic for “stream of the fort”. Archaeologists used to think that brochs were Iron Age forts (they date from more or less Roman times), though no one really knows. Maybe they just liked the view. Archaeologists get around the problem by calling them “complex Atlantic roundhouses”, and then wonder why they never get invited to parties. Originally they were imposing stone towers a couple of stories high, bulging at the base like a clay pot on the potter’s wheel; nowadays they’re mostly just 16-metre wide stone-lined holes in the ground, like at Ousdale.
The main entry to the broch
But the location! Like so many brochs it seems to mark a border—of a valley, a loch, an inlet, a river, of the land and the sea, even of time. And just now feels like one of those transition points in history, with the passing of the old Queen and accession of a new King, a new, untried prime minister, a war in Europe, energy no longer something to be taken for granted, and winter coming. The old certainties suddenly don’t seem so certain any more. There’s a great song by Al Stewart called “On The Border” which captures this feeling perfectly:
Late last night the rain was knocking on my window, I moved across the darkened room and in the lamp glow I thought I saw down in the street The spirit of the century Telling us that we’re all standing On the border…
Panorama of the interior
===========================
TECHNICAL STUFF
I’ve completed the first sleeve, six inches of cuff and all (sigh), and am now well embarked on the second. By the time I reached the cuff I had 84 stitches on my needles, i.e., just enough for 21 ribs of k2/p2. Now the end’s in sight, even if may not quite finish it this week: the nights are drawing in fast now, so my narrow window of summer light to knit using navy yarn is closing; time to start planning a gansey in pastel shades…
“For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground/ And tell sad stories of the death of kings,” as Shakespeare’s Richard II poignantly observed. Of queens, too: for, as you may perhaps have heard, Britain is now officially in mourning for the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
When I was younger I was something of a republican, feeling that a monarchy had no place in a serious, mature, modern democracy. But then I remembered that I lived in a country which had voted to name a scientific research ship “Boaty Mcboatface”; which has an unelected second chamber of Parliament, the House of Lords; and which now has noted climate change sceptic Jacob Rees-Mogg as its *checks notes* minister for climate change. At which point it dawned on me that adjectives like mature, modern and serious are, perhaps, a touch optimistic. (A propos of nothing, someone once labelled Rees-Mogg “The Haunted Pencil”; I don’t know why, but it cheers me up no end whenever I hear his name.)
My only brush with royalty came just over a decade ago, when one of Charles’s brothers, Edward, earl of Wessex, officially opened a new Scottish archive centre. I’d been invited to host the event, and it was something of a revelation. He was amusing, self-deprecating, made time for everyone, spoke to everyone, listened, and made each person feel a little special. And suddenly I got it: it wouldn’t have been the same with a politician (half the room would have voted for the other side) or a celebrity, when it would have been all about them. He made it about us. I was, a little to my own surprise, genuinely impressed.
Stopping for a cuppa
I was also a little surprised to find how touched I was by the passing of Her Majesty: touched by some of the tributes (especially the ones involving Paddington), touched by the grief of the family, and also by the memories it brought back of some of the losses in my own life, especially of my mother and (just recently) her sister. The Queen, God bless her, is dead: long live the King. And if another’s grief ever seems excessive or misplaced, well, maybe we should remember Benedick’s words in Much Ado About Nothing: everyone can master a grief but he that has it.
Waves on the harbour wall
=======================
TECHNICAL STUFF
So, the sleeve. In the original photo, George’s gansey has repeats of the pattern bands all the way down to the cuff. I’m not doing that for a couple of reasons. Firstly, and obviously, because I’m lazy. And secondly, because I don’t particularly like the look of a fully-patterned sleeve on a half-patterned body. It just looks a bit top-heavy to me, like a gansey designed for orcs (I like to think that Aragorn encouraged the surviving orcs to take up fishing for herring after the fall of the Dark Lord). But it’s just a question of personal taste. I cast on 137 stitches round the armhole, and after the gusset am decreasing at a rate of 2 stitches every 5 rows.The sleeve will be about 15.5 inches shoulder to cuff; the cuff will be 6 inches standard k2/p2 ribbing, folded back on itself.
Loch Watten
Now, I don’t know if this is useful or not. When I’m knitting purl rows on straight, double-pointed needles, try as I might I can’t get the stitches an even size across the join from one needle to the next: either they’re too loose, and they sag; or I overcompensate, and they end up tight and tiny. So I’ve got into the habit of just slipping the last 3 or 4 stitches from those on the needle I’ve just done onto my new needle. This means that I start my new needle with 3 or 4 purl stitches already completed, sitting there—i.e., the join/ transition point between needles is now 3 or 4 stitches back, it’s already happened—and I can carry on with my purl row, and the tension is automatically the same in every stitch. It only takes a couple of seconds per needle, and the effect is, well, seamless.
I was musing the other day on the the Bible story of the Prophet Elisha and the bears, as told in 2 Kings 2:23-24. As you will doubtless recall, the prophet was on his way to minister to Bethel when he was mocked for his baldness by some children of the city: “And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them”. (What, I wonder, is the procedure, if no bears are available, and you have to find a substitute? I mean, the only animals I usually see from my window are sheep, but I’m pretty sure the local children could take them in a fight.)
Gone to seed
This is the sort of smiting that seems, regrettably, to have gone out of fashion, leaving children free to mock the follically challenged without fear of ursine dismemberment. But if you had that sort of power, what other sorts of high crimes and misdemeanours would you punish with it? As an archivist, the worst crime my profession faces is the loss of original documents, something which has happened all too frequently in the past, and even in the present too.
Take Edward I who captured Edinburgh in 1296 and removed the nation’s archives, shipping them south to London, where they somehow (*cough*) disappeared. Then Cromwell came along in 1650 and did it all again. This time they weren’t misplaced: instead, after the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, they were actually being returned to Scotland, when the ship carrying the records sank in a storm off Northumberland. Or here’s another example: when Napoleon’s army invaded Russia in 1812 it was so badly prepared that, after the battle of Smolensk, French doctors had to use documents raided from the city’s archives as bandages. (I like to think that when the bandages were eventually removed the ink was transferred to the skin like a tattoo, so that Smolensk historians followed the French army around asking the soldiers if they’d remove their trousers so they could read their legs.)
The old gate
And as for anyone improperly withholding US government files from the National Archives, all I can say is, if I were the guilty party I’d be pretty nervous if I learned the FBI had requested the loan of a couple of she-bears from the Smithsonian National Zoo…
[Update to last week’s post: regrettably Margaret and I won’t now be attending Thursday’s craft event at Drumnadrochit owing to logistical challenges. We wish everyone involved a very successful event.]
Thistledown
============================
TECHNICAL STUFF
As you can see, I’ve now finished front and back, joined the shoulders, knit the collar and started on the first sleeve. I’ll say something about the sleeves next time.
The neckline isn’t shaped or indented at all, but is the traditional straight rectangle, and is the same front and back. I don’t usually worry too much about the exact number of stitches for the collar—so long as they can be divided by four for the k2-p2 ribbing, it doesn’t really matter. So for the first row of the collar I knit the stitches on the holders (i.e., the ones left over from front and back), and pick up stitches along the sides (the inside edges of the shoulder straps), aiming for roughly 8 stitches to the inch. I keep count as I go, so that I can finish with an exact multiple of 4 for the ribbing. Sometimes my counting goes awry, but it doesn’t matter: if I have one or two stitches too many, I can decrease them out of existence on the first pattern row of the collar (usually on a purl stitch, since the purl stitches are pushed to the background by the k2 ribs, and thus become invisible).
Back when I was little, I can’t remember how I imagined I’d be spending my time in my sixties: watching attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion, perhaps, or travelling the American Midwest teaching bullying cowboys the error of their ways by preaching non-violence, and, when that didn’t work, breaking their arms with kung fu. Not making urgent trips to the bathroom at inconvenient moments and trying to remember if I’ve already taken today’s medication. And yet here we are.
I wonder this about vampires, sometimes; does their biology stop when they get bitten? I mean, if Dracula’s hundreds of years old, think of the state of his prostate. (And his opinions: “The children of the night, what music they make. Not like modern so-called ‘popular music’, ha, I mean, call that music, there’s not even a bloody tune.”) I can barely crawl out of bed in the morning, never mind go creeping down castle walls face-down. I don’t suppose they have to worry about blood pressure, but do vampires’ teeth ever fall out? And what happens if someone knocks out a canine? Are there vampire dentists? Or do very elderly vampires go searching for prey armed with a very sharp straw?
Wildflowers by the path
Meanwhile, back in the real world I have a couple of parish notices. First of all, Judit’s been busy again, this time with a gansey in lovely grey-green Finnish yarn (Novita 7 Veljestä, or 7 Brothers), not unlike the Frangipani Cordova shade. The pattern is the classic double-line zigzag, also known as marriage lines, as described in Rae Compton’s book, pp.82-83 (with associations all along the east coast, though here I’m claiming it for Scotland!). Congratulations again to Judit, and many thanks as ever to her for sharing it with us.
In other news, Margaret and I will be making a rare public appearance at the Highland Meet the Makers event on the morning of Thursday 8 September at Blairbeg Hall in Drumnadrochit, south of Inverness near the shores of Loch Ness. The event is organised by Loch Ness Knitting, and is primarily a showcase for Highland yarn suppliers and craftspeople. We’re delighted to be invited, and will be taking along a selection of ganseys for people to look at and hopefully chat about. If it’s quiet we may even slip out for a spot of Nessie-watching.
Abstract hawthorn
And if growing old hasn’t turned out quite the way I’d expected, to be fair few things have. Take joy. I used to imagine the summit of human pleasure came through falling in love, the passion of physical embrace, the symphonies of Bruckner, or religious ecstasy. But no: turns out bliss really lies in finally scratching that itch in the small of your back that’s been driving you mad, or finding a space in a hospital car park, or discovering you can still reach your little toe with the toenail clippers. If only I’d known this earlier, how much simpler life would have been…
==========================
TECHNICAL STUFF
I’ve finished Side A and am well embarked on Side B. (Because this gansey doesn’t have a shaped neckline there technically isn’t a front and a back, as such.)
Now, either this batch of yarn is knitting up a bit thicker than some others, or (more likely) I just got the maths slightly wrong, because I ran out of room at the top of the yoke (i.e., I still had some rows to go when the armhole reached 8 inches from the gusset). I only had 3 rows still to knit, but 3 rows per side equals 6 rows in total, or half an inch, and that would make the armhole just a wee bit deeper than I wanted.
Flower of Scotland
So what I did was simply divide the row into three, a third each for the two shoulders and another third for the neck. (As my row has 180 stitches, each third has 60 stitches.) I put the neck stitches in the middle on a holder—and yes, the chevron ends 3 rows early here, but I’m hoping no one will really notice once it’s finished. And after all, the original (which is knit on finer needles and so has more rows than mine) has a truncated chevron band at the top, so obviously the knitter was fine with being pragmatic too.
I then knit the 3 extra rows to complete the chevron on each shoulder. Now, my shoulder straps are usually 12 rows, so I knit another plain row after the chevron and then made up the remaining 8 rows with 2 ridge and furrows (of 4 rows of p-p-k-k each). More on this next week.
I should finish Side B this week, then it’s on to the collar and—sigh—picking up stitches for the sleeve.
“The herring fishing has increased the wealth, but also the wickedness,” wrote the Reverend Charles Thomson about Wick in 1840. “There is great consumption of spirits, there being 22 public houses in Wick and 23 in Pulteneytown, seminaries of Satan and Belial.” (Interestingly, when I left school I applied to attend a seminary of Belial, but my grades weren’t good enough: I only got a D in Moral Turpitude.) The consumption of alcohol was the main reason Wick was known as The Sodom of the North—at least, I assume that was the main reason—and with 45 pubs for a town of 6,000 inhabitants most of the year, you can rather see why. When a fish curer contracted with a skipper for the season he also usually undertook to furnish the crew with tobacco and whisky, which actually makes you wonder how anyone except the publicans made a profit.
Redshank in the river
I mentioned the other week how the boats would go out in the afternoons and evenings, locate a shoal of herring, shot (i.e., cast) their nets, stay out overnight, and haul them in and return to harbour next morning. When they shot their their nets, fishermen would follow Jesus’s instructions in the Bible, St. John 21:6: And he said unto them, Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find. They cast therefore, and now they were not able to draw it for the multitude of fishes. They fished at night because it was believed it made the nets harder to see. A shoal of herring could be sighted by the presence of gannets or gulls, or even whales, and a slick of oil of the surface of the water. Most boats carried up to six nets, which were made of hemp, 30 yards long by 14 yards wide, and buoyed up by corks, with the ends attached to empty barrels or inflated pigs’ bladders. Sometimes if the fishing was poor the fishermen might even toss coins overboard, saying, “If we canna catch ye, we’ll buy ye.”
The fountain, back in operation
The Statistical Account of Scotland of 1845 bemoans the fact that so many turned to the fishing between July and September to make a quick buck: “Weavers, taylors, shoemakers, house and boat carpenters, blacksmiths, masons, &c…. repair to the fishing boats, go to sea in the night, the only time for catching herrings, and spend all the day in sleep, by which their customers are sure to be ill served”. So let me get this straight: you sleep all day, put to sea, sleep overnight in the boat, haul in the nets, return to port for another day’s hard sleeping—and you got paid? Where do I sign up?
Wayside flowers
=================================
TECHNICAL STUFF
After knitting the gussets to a half-diamond 17 stitches across (plus a couple of rows), or three inches in length, I’ve put them on holders and divided front and back. As I usually find commercial stitch holders get in the way for a while when I’m knitting the rest of the body, I tend to thread some leftover differently-coloured guernsey yarn through the gusset stitches and tie each one off with a bow. The downside is that you have to be careful when you start the sleeves, as it’s very easy to spilt stitches when you go to put them back on a needle (this one advantage a commercial stitch holder—which is basically an oversized safety pin—has over my method, as you’re effectively transferring the stitches from needle to needle).
I use a second circular needle after dividing for front and back. That way I can leave the rest of the stitches on my original circular needle and use another one for whichever half I start with (usually the back, though of course if the gansey doesn’t have a shaped neckline, like this one doesn’t, both sides are interchangeable). So now I’m well embarked on Side A, and it only remains to be seen how accurate my maths is in terms of the pattern bands when I reach the top for the shoulder (the jury is currently out).
I’ve been thinking a lot about borders recently: frontiers, marches, edges and liminal spaces. Partly this was inspired by a visit to Ousdale broch, which lies on the coast near the Caithness-Sutherland border. You park in a lay-by off the main road, and then follow a path which winds lazily down towards the sea for about a mile and a quarter. This gentle slope lulls you into a false sense of security, as the only hazards you have to face are the numerous fewmets left by the sheep that graze there, and you enjoy the solitude and the scenery, relishing the unspoiled landscape. Coming back, however, is another matter: before you’re halfway up the return slope you’re damning the unspoiled scenery to blazes and wondering why no one has installed a funicular railway.
The path to the broch
The main entry to the broch
Panorama of the interior
