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 Ah, sleep. Something which everyone should have more of, according to researchers. Including me, these past few months. Inevitably, just when sleep patterns sauntered towards a new normal, another hand grenade was lobbed into the rippling pool of tranquillity. By last Monday, I’d had enough of depression topped with new anxiety and aided by poor sleep. I made two appointments, one with the doctor, and one with the mental health team.
 Summer Grasses The doctor prescribed some meds, which were started on Friday night. It had an almost immediate effect in terms of sedative properties; I was falling-down sleepy. Drowsiness continued through most of the following day, but the second day was far better. The effects should even out over time; the important thing is I’ve had two nights of better sleep.
The mental health team did two quizzes. The results were that ‘therapeutic intervention’ wasn’t necessary, and it’s ‘situational anxiety’, which will ease over time. As we ended the appointment, something the counsellor said was a mini-lightbulb moment: “It’s out of your control”. A simple, short phrase that made me realise that yes indeed, it is out of my control. I knew it, of course, but having someone else say it was the last blow of the hammer on the nail of realisation, and brought it home. I’ve been much better since.
 Laburnum Regarding my brother-in-law, we’re not much further forward than we were 10 days ago. The cousins have been able to access the house, because I found details of a key safe in old e-mails. The police have finally told us that the items taken for safekeeping can be collected; if they’d initially told us this, it would have reduced anxiety and phone calls. On their visit to the house, the cousins found the house it in good order, something we are extremely glad about. Perishable food has been disposed and the rubbish put out. The next-door farmers are keeping an eye on the place too, quizzing anyone unknown. But we still await news from the Coroner. Without that, we can’t move forward. Still in limbo.
 Koi in lichen The new gansey has been started; the necessary measurements came Thursday. The recipient, a lovely lady from the funeral directors who helped turn arranging a service from a pig’s ear into a silk purse experience, has requested a split welt. I’m using the Channel Island cast-on; its picot edge will give the gansey a more feminine air. I haven’t conclusively decided on the pattern, and have two from the Johnston Collection in mind. One is a full body pattern. The other has bands of patterning, but only glimpses of the pattern appear in the photo because the gansey is under a waistcoat. Enough to see what the pattern is, but not enough to see if the pattern continues to the hem.
I’m off on holiday for a fortnight, one that was planned in the balmy days of autumn. I hope to do some brief blogs while I’m away, but you’ll understand if I don’t manage it.
 The first half of last week went well. The weather wasn’t great – it’s been truly awful lately – but life was approaching normalcy. Ordering things online, finishing a sewing project, going on walks, volunteering at the museum where we greeted cold visitors and parties of schoolchildren. A copy of the Scottish Journal of Yarn was collected from the post office; it contains an article on ganseys, with a tribute to Gordon.
Alas, I haven’t read it carefully, as I’ve been overtaken by events. The next day, after a morning shift at the museum, I was sitting in the lounge knitting and listening to an audiobook. I’d just finished a stone-cold cup of tea and was about to do other things.
Wind on the Marsh The doorbell rang. It shouldn’t be the postie; I hadn’t ordered anything. When the door was opened, two 7’ policemen stood outside. “Do you know Colin Reid?”, one asked (Gordon’s older brother). When policemen ask you that, you know it’s bad. They came in, and quickly trying to clear a sofa, they said they preferred to stand whilst I sat. What could I say but, “Colin’s died, hasn’t he?”. What a shock, completely unexpected. I thought he’d live as long as his parents, who both died at 90.
 Waiting Colin, being a punctual soul, had missed the previous evening’s meeting of the motor club. He was a very active member, being their membership secretary and organising classic car drives. They were understandably concerned, but would check on him the next day, when one of the members had arranged to look at one of Colin’s cars. When he arrived at the house, and Colin didn’t appear, he phoned another member, who came to the house. Then they phoned the police, who found Colin when they entered the property.
 Grasses and Buttercups The police couldn’t find a record of next of kin, but they did find an address book in the house. Mine was the first name they found with the same surname. Consequently, Police Scotland were sent, who performed their duties admirably. They said they had a duty of care, and could not have been more helpful, even offering cups of tea. They even notified the neighbours, when I said I’d visit after making some phone calls. My lovely neighbours poured me a wee dram of brandy, and we raised our glasses to Colin.
 Colin at his Dad’s funeral reception Today, his nearby cousins and I have more information. The Coroner has been contacted regarding next of kin. There will be a postmortem; the results will arrive within a week. The death was not deemed suspicious, so hopefully it will be straightforward. Until then we wait. But the sun is mostly out and it’s nearly warm, and stress levels have dropped.
The next Gansey. As you can see, the next gansey hasn’t been started yet, but this is due not to recent events, but to lack of organisation. The recipient has chosen the colour – Frangipani Sea Spray – and pattern charting is in progress. The measurements should be dropped off soon, when I can start calculations. And the blog is late this week due to internet failure.
Just a very brief note to say the blog will be late this week due to circumstances beyond my control. The Internet connection is up and down like a yo-yo, more off than on. it should be sorted in a couple of days.
See you all then.

 Medieval manuscripts. Those two words conjure images of cold, drafty monasteries, fantastical illuminations, monks slipping chilled hands up sleeves to warm them, tonsures bent over writing desks. Countless words written by anonymous hands. So anonymous that it is impossible to determine the gender of a scribe from their handwriting. But nunneries and convents needed and used manuscripts, and likely produced them for other establishments as well. A rare few manuscripts contain the names of scribes, unobtrusively written in the margins or coded in small letters above the text, but there is also physical evidence in skeletons.
 Red Campion A female skeleton dated to c1000-1200 AD was excavated in Germany during building renovations, and in 2011 researchers analysed her teeth hoping to find evidence of diet. What they found in the mineralised dental plaque was quite a surprise. There were tiny blue particles, which upon further investigation were found to be grains of lapis lazuli. This rare and expensive mineral, originating in Afghanistan, was ground to a powder to make the pigment ultramarine, and was particularly favoured for painting the robes of the Virgin Mary. During the Renaissance, the cost and quality of ultramarine was often specified in artists’ contracts. The current theory is that this anonymous woman was an illustrator of manuscripts, and the mineral was deposited on her teeth when she licked her brush to draw it into a point.
 Back Garden Orchid In a way, knitting is much the same, in that you can’t tell the gender of the knitter from the finished article. Men were skilled knitters in the past, but did they knit ganseys? Nowadays, it is always assumed that women knit the ganseys. But many were machine knit, something that isn’t mentioned often.
The gansey just completed is of course completely hand knit. It’s been a gansey on training wheels; I haven’t knit a gansey on my own for about 30 years. During that time, of course, Gordon perfected his own gansey knitting. I started work on another gansey a few years ago, when Gordon was there to lend a helping hand and answer questions. He’d given me one of his projects to continue, when I couldn’t find anything to knit during Zoom calls; he’d done the ribbing. It’s still in progress; the second sleeve is nearly finished.
 Raindrops on Peony The ‘training wheels’ for this gansey was one of the same pattern which I found in his boxes of finished jumpers. Another aid – and it was like finding the Holy Grail – were the measurements, stitch counts, and pattern that he’d chosen. Both the existing gansey and the notes provided helping hands in absentia, but I still managed to overlook details, like when to start the gusset and how many diamonds are on the sleeves. But these are just details, and this luscious pink gansey needn’t be an exact copy of the exemplar. All in all, I’m quite pleased with it, despite seeing all the little flaws that only the maker would notice.
Two Together
 It’s your lunch hour, and you have a few errands to run or messages to deliver. You leave your workplace and go about your business. You’ve looked forward to getting out all morning, because the previous few days have been bitterly cold, and today, at least, it’s above freezing.
You are just approaching the supports of the elevated railway when you hear a roaring, grumbling bang quickly followed by a machine-gun like staccato of ping! ping! ping! As you turn to look behind you, you are swept off your feet by a wave of thick brown liquid, but you have time to grasp the railway support as you start to be carried away. Then, as the mass quickly solidifies in the cool air, you find you can’t escape.
Crow on the Wing Something like this could have happened to you in Boston, Massachusetts, on 15 January 1919 at 1230 pm, when a molasses storage tank in the North End of the city burst explosively and flooded the surrounding area. The thunderous rumble was the tank’s collapse; the whizzing pings were the rivets propelled from the tank’s steel plates. Reports say that the wave was 25 feet at its highest and flowed at around 35 mph. The burst tank was originally 50 ft high x 90 ft in diameter and had a capacity of 2.3 million US gallons or 8700 m3. That’s a lot of molasses. After the initial surge, the clinging liquid flowed through the city like cold, sweetly fragrant lava, becoming progressively more viscous as it cooled further.
 Flowers by the Sea Rescue efforts were underway quickly. Cadets from the maritime training vessel docked nearby ran to the scene to extricate those entrapped. The police, Army, Navy, and Red Cross arrived shortly afterwards. The search for victims went on for four days; some had been swept into the harbour and weren’t found until months afterwards. In all, 21 people died, and 150 were injured from airborne or molasses-swept debris. Cleanup took weeks, using jets of water from a fireboat. De-sticking the greater Boston area took even longer, as rescuers, clean-up crews, and sightseers had tracked and deposited molasses everywhere – on payphones, on subway seats, into homes. It was said that for decades afterwards, on warm summer days, it was possible to smell odour of molasses wafting from the streets and buildings.
 Front Garden Orchid However, there were some positive outcomes. One of the first class action suits in Massachusetts history was filed against the tank’s owners, which led to modern corporate regulation. After three years of hearings, and findings that the tank had been shoddily built, other laws concerning civil engineering were also changed to ensure that such structures were more safely built. (Many thanks to Wikipedia, where there is an informative article with more detail.)
 Impressionist Irises Unlike molasses, the flow down the sleeve of the gansey has been progressing more and more quickly. There were a few sticky points (inattention again), annoying but quickly fixed. Being so near the home stretch and having a self-imposed deadline of 1 June, a few extra hours were found to toboggan down the sleeve. Just six inches of cuff to go . . .
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Ah, sleep. Something which everyone should have more of, according to researchers. Including me, these past few months. Inevitably, just when sleep patterns sauntered towards a new normal, another hand grenade was lobbed into the rippling pool of tranquillity. By last Monday, I’d had enough of depression topped with new anxiety and aided by poor sleep. I made two appointments, one with the doctor, and one with the mental health team. 
