Wick (Cumming Bros): Week 8 – 20 January

Back in the Middle Ages people believed that their destiny was watched over and affected by guardian angels or malicious demons. I’m starting to see what they meant. For example, on Saturday I decided to walk up the road to Tesco’s for a loaf of bread and some grapes. I checked the skies for clouds before I set off: nope, nothing. Light breeze, blue skies, crisp snap in the air. Traces of frost on the lawn like the skin on a rice pudding. Perfect. Off I went, possibly even with a merry song on my lips.

Moon Tide

Within four hundred yards the sky was black from horizon to horizon, I was battling a howling gale like Scott of the Antarctic, supposing he had nipped to the supermarket to stock up on some snacks en route, or possibly even en croute, and my face was being shredded by a blizzard of hailstone spicules. In seconds I was soaked to the skin, so I decided I might as well carry on as go back. When I reached Tesco’s, carrying more than my own body weight in melting hailstones, the skies cleared and the sun came out. I trudged wetly around the aisles, a team of shop assistants following me discreetly with a mop and bucket. And when, with a bulging knapsack, I turned to leave, the clouds rolled back in and it pelted down with hail again. At least this time I had a tail wind, though the hail accumulated on my back until I looked as if I was giving one of Frosty the Snowman’s nephews a piggy back. When I got home—well, you’re ahead of me, I see: sunshine and blue skies. And all I can say is, I wish I’d kept the receipt for my guardian angel so I could trade them in for one who doesn’t take quite so many cigarette breaks.

Ribbon of Trees

In gansey news, it’s that moment when it all comes together and it starts to look like a pullover. I’ve finished front and back, joined the shoulders, knit the collar and picked up the stitches around the first armhole. Knitting this one has been a bit of a slog, to be honest. Partly because the yarn—Wendy’s—is so uneven; but mostly because of my cold, which has left me with precious little energy, even for knitting. Thankfully it’s finally starting to wear off, and and as the days get lighter everyone’s mood improves; as though spring might actually one day be a possibility.

Finally this week, an update on our robot vacuum cleaner. So far it’s been a huge success, for all it keeps getting stuck in blind corners, eating the curtains and has to be changed as often as a diarrhetic infant. It’s a truism that British homes are always far more spic and span once we employ cleaners, on the grounds that we’re so appalled at the thought that a stranger might see our homes in a dirty state that we clean them thoroughly before the cleaner arrives. I haven’t quite reached that state with the robovac, though I have caught it regarding a particularly dusty corner with a disapproving tilt of its carapace, and making “tut tut” noises under its breath. I have a sneaking feeling that in a year I’ll be doing the vacuuming while the robot swings lazily in a hammock drinking cocktails…

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Here as promised the much-delayed pattern chart. It’s a very simple pattern, and not the kind of pattern I usually knit, but as so often the simplicity makes for a very effective combination when it’s done.