Gansey Nation

Well, here we are, a new week and an exciting new gansey to explore. I’m knitting this one in Frangipani Moonlight, one of my favourite shades. It’s for another work colleague (and bearing in mind that my place of work now employs over sixty people, if your next question is, Are you going to knit a gansey for all your colleagues, the answer is, Possibly not). The pattern is inspired by another gem from Flamborough, illustration 79 on page 58 in Rae Compton’s book (Amazon affiliate link). It’s a standard Flamborough combination of ropes, moss stitch and diamonds, but with a heart pattern running up the centre. I’ll post the pattern next time when hopefully it’s a little more advanced.

Meanwhile, last Saturday dawned cool and damp so we decided to go for a walk under the shelter of the trees of Dunnet Forest. We took along Legolas the Elf, as you never can tell when you might run into a raiding party of goblins if you travel too far from the sanctum of Wick. But this proved a big mistake, for almost at once he turned all fey and eldritch; it seems there’s nothing quite like a forest to bring out an elf’s inner drama queen.

Spider’s Web after rain

We hadn’t gone more than a few yards into the shadow of the trees before Legolas stopped and held up a warning hand.
“This forest is old,” he said. “Very old.”
“Uh, I really don’t think so. I mean, they literally grow those trees to sell them every Christmas.”
He narrowed his eyes, which made me wonder when he’d last visited an optician. “It’s full of memory… and anger.”
“That’s a squirrel.”
“The trees have feelings, my friend.”
“You mean, like those passive-aggressive Christmas trees over there?”

Forest Trees

Just then a deep note resonated through the forest. Legolas tilted his head to listen.
“The trees are speaking to each other,” he said.
“Um… Pretty sure that’s a wood pigeon.”
“The elves began it. Waking up the trees, teaching them to speak.”
“Still a wood pigeon, mate. Look, tell you what, let’s forget about the forest and just go get an ice cream.”
So it was that twenty minutes later we three stood at John O’Groats, backs to the wind, looking out to sea, ice creams in hand.
Legolas held up his double scoop with extra sprinkles.
“This ice cream cone is old,” he said. “Very old. It’s full of sugar and modifying agents… and anger.”
“I thought mine tasted funny.”
Suddenly he turned to stare inland. “A red sun rises. Blood has been spilled this night.”
“Oh, you’re giving us the Elf weather now? Hang on a minute though, that’s Thurso over there, isn’t it? Fair enough, then…”

Chicory

Well, here it is—the Flamborough gansey in all its glory, washed and blocked and with the pattern properly exposed. The alternating rows of knit and moss stitches running up the length of jumper look like a bead curtain but act as pleats; and these, together with the purl stitches either side of the cables, naturally pull it in and make it narrower. One of the reasons I choose this sort of pattern when I’m knitting a gansey for someone who isn’t me, is that it gives us some flexibility in terms of width: we can block it as wide as it needs to be, without stretching. It wasn’t an easy project to knit, requiring a little too much concentration to be entirely relaxing, but it was, I think, worth it (so long as it fits!). And the colour is, of course, to dye for.

Sunday at the coast

But lo! Others have been busy a-ganseying besides me: notably Camilla, who has finished a rather stunning red gansey. The yarn is Frangipani, but the patterns are taken from Alice Starmore’s Charts for Color Knitting and converted, not only to monochrome knitting but also with an element of re-sizing. The end result, I’m sure you’ll agree, is very impressive, and not just for how the patterns were translated. (Camilla’s also sent us a picture of an earlier gansey, knit from patterns in Beth Brown-Reinsel, so if you click on the link you’ll see two for the price of one.) Many congratulations to Camilla!

Saturday at the Trinkie

Here in Wick the summer continues cool, grey and mostly dry—so dry in fact that we’re in danger of being officially designated a drought area, which seems absurd considering how wet, flooded and generally be-thunderstormed the entire rest of the country’s been. Eagerly we watch weather forecasts, which show heavy bands of rain heading our way, only for them to veer off to either side, or mysteriously evaporate before they make landfall. The river’s so dry that anyone wishing to down their sorrows is now officially advised to bring a straw; if I threw myself off the bridge at low tide I think I’d bounce.

Chicory

Meanwhile we’ve been rewatching the three Lord of the Rings movies, which hold up very well, considering we now know the trick was done. But one thing has bothered me ever since I first read the books getting on for fifty years ago: the fact that the king’s duplicitous counsellor is called “Wormtongue”. I mean, you’d think someone might have wondered about that a bit sooner, really. But I suppose we should be grateful that this sort of naming convention more commonly associated with The Pilgrim’s Progress doesn’t apply in detective fiction as well:
Watson: “Good Lord, Holmes, how’d you do it?”
Holmes: “You mean what first led me to suspect Sir Jasper Dastardly Arsenic-Poisoner?”
Watson: “Yes Holmes.”
Holmes: “It was elementary, my dear Watson. But what really puzzles me is this other case, the deadly assault upon Mr Innocent Victim whose fortune will now be inherited by Lord Henry Bludgeon…”