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 Can you see the difference? Well, no, isn’t much. Until Friday evening I didn’t feel like knitting, not even my own. Instead, I took out Gordon’s notebook and tried to make sense of his system of lines, dots, and five-barred gates. He did explain it multiple times, but I never took it in. I think there’s a blog post somewhere … I’ll be able to use both his notebook and the first sleeve to continue.
 Stormy weather Saturday evening, I knit one row. It was a start. As I lifted the knitting into my lap, examining it to see how to proceed, there was a faint odour, a waft. I realised it was his. It’s hard to explain the feeling that brings. On the one hand, you know they’re gone, but on the other, it’s as though they are still with you. It’s strangely comforting, and I may miss it, but when the gansey is done, it will be blocked and sent to the recipient. It must have been the same with the other ganseys he knit, but I never handled them apart from repairing errors, washing, and blocking.
 Caithness Potholes The start of last week was relatively calm, just notifying friends and work colleagues via social media and telephone, and starting the process of the paperwork. The dam broke on Thursday, with multiple phone calls and appointments to make. The most important things are progressing; the smaller things will be taken care of as and when. The service arrangements should be sorted soon. There are many decisions to make regarding that. A streamed service is necessary, because of friends, relatives, and blog-readers living around the world. I will post a link as soon as I receive it. And then there’s all the other paperwork.
 Clear Frosty Morning I am slowly finding my rhythm of life. It’s like being part of a binary star system, where one of the stars has, for some reason, shot off into space. The remaining planet then takes a while to settle down into its own orbit. Balance will be achieved, but, as with any process, it will take time.
And finally, many many thanks for your condolences, sympathy, and best wishes. I am touched that so many of you wish to continue reading the blog; I’ll try not to disappoint.
Regarding the donation button at the bottom of the blog. I hadn’t really thought about it last week, apart from having a working one available. Over the week, I’ve decided to give all donations from 1 December – 28 February to two charities. Gordon made regular donations to Cancer Research UK, so that is one. The second will be the Johnston Collection of the Wick Society – it was the source of many of the patterns that Gordon knit in the past five or six years; it seems appropriate.
Dear reader, it will be a short post today. It grieves me very deeply, very deeply indeed, to report that Gordon passed away on the evening of 1 December. Although the chemotherapy went well, he was in such a weakened state that when he developed an infection on the afternoon of the 1st, it led to sepsis and general organ failure. They did their best to resuscitate. He was confident that he would come through the treatment and be able to write the blog for many years to come.
As you can see from the photo above, he did not make any progress in the past week. He was feeling very poorly and didn’t have the energy to do anything.
 Coo I plan to finish the ganseys he started, as they were to be gifts. But although I can match his knitting skills (I taught him, after all, and helped him through many a wrong or dropped stitch), I know that I will never be able to match his wit, erudition and humour. He worked very hard crafting the blog, and was far better with words than I will ever be.
 Splash! at the North Baths I know the blog will lose readers, but I plan to continue at least for a while, and hope to keep the information pages available. It will be difficult at first. And I also hope to continue his planned projects – he has a huge stash of gansey yarn, it must be knit up!
And thanks to you for your good wishes, and visiting the blog loyally over the past thirteen or so years it’s been in existence. It wouldn’t be here without you.
 Patterns in the foam Margaret
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 I’ve now completed my course of chemotherapy for my leukaemia at Inverness hospital, two jabs a day for five days (arms, tummy, thighs, arms, tummy; ouch, ouch, and double-ouch). Now we have an anxious wait to see if it’s worked, and that could take a while; but if any of you have any influence with the powers that rule this benighted universe, please do put in a good word for me, won’t you? Meanwhile it looks like I’ll be here “for a few weeks”; and all the while Christmas is looming on the horizon of my mind, as inescapable as Moby Dick swimming towards his final showdown with the Pequod and its doomed crew.
 Settling in at the rookery Many thanks to everyone for all the messages of goodwill, both in the blog and on Facebook and online (including Ravelry). I’m not able to reply to them individually, that chemo is nasty stuff (it’s a bit like finding a rat infestation in your kitchen and deciding to treat it with grenades and a flamethrower) but I’ve read them all, and they really mean a lot. Thank you.
 Wind in the Trees In parish notices, Karen H has sent in some photos of a stunning blue version of the Wick Leaf gansey, as published in The Knitter in January. Well done to Karen – Mr H is one lucky chap!
Now, I’m all for some quality black humour in a good cause, and I’ve been cheering myself up this week revisiting amusing deathbed last words. A cracker, though doubtless apocryphal, is “I’ve poisoned the buffet”. But the best by far comes from Voltaire, when a priest asked him as he lay dying if he renounced the devil and all his works; to which Voltaire replied, “Now, now, my good man, this is no time to be making enemies…”
 A participant in the annual Umbrella Parade
 The biopsy results are in, and, in truth, it was always going to be serious. I mean, your body doesn’t just stop producing blood cells because the mind is elsewhere (temporarily distracted, say, by wondering if God can create a stone that’s too heavy for even Him to lift, or what was the best thing before sliced bread?). Plus, two blood transfusions in a fortnight was kind of a clue that something was up.
 Webs of Autumn Reader, I have leukaemia. It’s a comparatively rare form, charmingly named “hairy cell leukaemia”. I’m not going to pretend I understand all this, since I majored in medieval history and foolishly didn’t take the module “ways in which your body will try to kill you in your sixties”, but basically you produce too many of the wrong kind of blood cells. These bad cells then crowd out the ones you need [Think of it like fifth century Anglo-Saxon invaders driving out the native Celts – Ed.], leaving you tired, anaemic and liable to infection, much as I’ve been these last few weeks.
 Haybales at Sunset Well, it can be treated by chemotherapy, and I’m just waiting to find out when my course will start. The doctor says I should return to a full quality of life afterwards, and that it shouldn’t impact how long I live; so while I don’t suppose it’s ever fun to be told you have cancer, all in all I suppose it could be much, much worse.
 Rainbow over the harbour When the call comes I’ll go into hospital for a couple of weeks, then self-isolate at home until sometime in the new year; my body needing time to start filling me up again with my own blood, instead of other people’s. Till then, all I can do is keep on keeping on, see how far I get with the current project… and ponder important questions like, how much deeper the ocean would be if sponges didn’t grow in it…?
 Birds on a Wire
Update – Monday evening: Gordon is now receiving chemotherapy at Raigmore Hospital in Inverness. And yes, he took his knitting.
 What’s the most unnerving thing you can hear when you’re lying in your back, with a cannula in your arm, waiting for a CT scan? I suppose “Oops” would be right up there, or possibly, “Can someone fetch a bucket?”. In my case it was being told that the dye they were about to inject me with might give me a warm sensation, I might feel my face flush – “Oh, and you might also get a feeling around your middle that you’ve just peed your pants.” Wait, what?
 This was the last of the scans I’m having (for now) to help the doctors determine the cause of my severe anaemia. Luckily they have a CT scanner here in Wick. The machine is a large, white ring, like a miniature Stargate, and the bed you lie on is propelled, none too gently, two or three times in and out, like someone poking a hole in the middle of a bagel, while a recorded voice booms at you “Breathe in!”, “Hold your breath!”, and “Breathe normally!”. It’s a bit intense, as though they’d got a US Army drill sergeant to do the recording, and I kept expecting it to add, “You horrible little worm”.
 Looking upriver It’s loud, too. The scanner makes a noise like a 747 revving its engines, and it’s just as well I was reminded to breathe: my atavistic instincts kicked in, and I found myself holding my breath and trying to lie perfectly still, like my caveman ancestors playing dead when cornered by, say, a particularly grumpy woolly mammoth. At least the scanning part was over quickly, in less than five minutes, and the only bit that really hurt was when they removed the tape holding the cannula in place, together with what felt like most of my arm hair.
 Storm damage at the Trinkie The nurse said it would take seven to ten days for the results to come through, so I don’t expect them to be ready for when I go back to see the consultant in Inverness this week. Meanwhile all I can do is wait. It’s a curious time, an in-between time, as though I’m in a casino at the roulette table, and I’ve bet everything on 37 red: the wheel is spinning, the ball is in play, bouncing between numbers, and who knows where it will land? Still, I do have one piece of good news: as I could confirm after some surreptitious fumbling, once the dye entered my bloodstream, despite a warm sensation, reader, I did not pee my pants. Right now, that feels like a victory…
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Can you see the difference? Well, no, isn’t much. Until Friday evening I didn’t feel like knitting, not even my own. Instead, I took out Gordon’s notebook and tried to make sense of his system of lines, dots, and five-barred gates. He did explain it multiple times, but I never took it in. I think there’s a blog post somewhere … I’ll be able to use both his notebook and the first sleeve to continue.
