Wick (D Gillies): Week 2 – 10 February

Before I opened the curtains this morning, there were sounds outside.  Assuming it was pitch dark and that nothing should be stirring, I listened carefully.  It was birds in the plum tree, and then I realised that in reality dawn was soon to break, and the sparrows were just going about their business.  It’s a harbinger of spring, hearing birds in the morning.

Hawthorn budding

There are other signs of spring, too.  The snowdrops around town are blooming, although not yet in the back garden.  Daffodils are sending up flower buds.  On trees and bushes, shoot tips are starting to swell, and soon there will be pussywillow catkins along the riverside path.  Plus it is not dark at 5 p.m.

Last year’s flowers

A few weeks ago, with Spring is in the offing, I made an appointment with the dentist.  I haven’t been in over a year.  The appointment came round this week, and it was both good and bad.  The good:  I didn’t need to visit the hygienist.  “I can see you have very good dental hygiene,” the dentist said.  The bad?  A cavity under a decades-old metal filling.  It is always disconcerting when the dentist, after poking your gums with the pointy end of the probe, then inserts it into a hole in your tooth and waggles it around.  She asked me to turn my head so the trainee assistant could see.  “See that white?  It’s not tooth, it’s calcification.  That bit there (poke poke waggle) is the cavity.  We need to fill it or there’s danger of the tooth breaking.”  At least there was only one filling, but I have a feeling it will be a big one.  I made an appointment for the earliest available date – 1 April – and vowed to cut back on sugar.

Yet I might need that sugar to fuel the next gansey.  I’ve cast on with a Channel Island cast on and will start with 1×1 ribbing.  Most of the week I’ve been measuring and re-measuring the gauge swatch, restretching and measuring again, and attempting to chart a version of the pattern that would fit the stitches required.  The first set of measurements didn’t seem believable, but the second set required complete re-jigging of the chart.  I tried for several days to capture the essence of the pattern in a smaller chart.  The problem was to reduce the number of rows, but not the number of stitches, and to keep the central panel at about one third of the width.  Although the diamonds in the yoke don’t look square, in terms of numbers they are square:  a diamond that is 39 st wide will be 39 rows high.  To reduce the rows, the width of the motif would also need to change.  This might work on side panels, but not the central panel, which needed to retain its width to keep the character of the original.  After struggling with this, charting and re-charting, I remembered the first set of measurements, which would give me something much closer to the Johnston photo.  It only needed to be slightly wider.  It’s a bit of a leap in the dark, particularly with different yarn that may not behave like our old friend, gansey 5-ply.