I started to talk last time about how the fishing industry in Wick operated, and now I’d like to share with you a little more on that. I just find it all so fascinating.
When we think about the fishing, we tend to picture it as it was in its later days, when fishermen and -lassies followed the herring round the coast, from the Western Isles, past Orkney, round Caithness, down the Moray Firth and the Scottish coast, down past Northumberland and Yorkshire and on to East Anglia. But this didn’t properly start until, what, the 1870s?
Sign at the Forum Arts Centre, Groningen, The Netherlands
Before then in Wick the merchants, the fish curers, owned the boats and hired the crews and gutters. The population of the town doubled for those few short weeks to 12,000, many of them Gaelic-speaking Highlanders. In Wick the boats remained idle on the quays from September to July. At the start of the season, a curer would contract with a skipper to crew the boat and land fish for him at a fixed price of so much per “cran” (a cran was a standard measure, holding about twelve hundred herring, give or take). For every cran of herring the boat landed, the curer would give the skipper a “cran token”. At the end of the season the boats would be hauled back onto the quays and the skippers would redeem the tokens for cash. They would then use the money to pay their crews, and settle their debts in the town.
For this is the truly remarkable thing: for three months the whole town ran on credit, with a great reckoning in September. Any money left over would be taken home, usually to help survive a bleak winter on the family croft. And sometimes if the fishing was poor there was nothing left over, and all those poor people had to go away empty-handed, with nothing to show for all that effort.
Riverside view, Wick
As the years passed, and families and friends began to club together to buy their own boats, the economy shifted. The fishermen became professionals, following the herring as they migrated, and auctioning their catches to the highest bidders at the nearest port. In the 1880s the trawlers came and they, like the dwarves in The Lord of the Rings, delved too greedily and too deep, and now the vast shoals of herring are no more. But for a while, for maybe 50-60 years up to the 1860s and 70s, the ecosystem was just about in balance, and an economy flourished that’s quite unique in my experience.
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TECHNICAL STUFF
I promised I’d explain all my behind-the-scenes workings out on this gansey, and so today we’re going to look at the question of when you start the yoke pattern. (The answer is, of course, it depends on the number of rows you need.) As this is a replica based on an old photograph, I’m going to try to get as close to the original pattern as I can. And yes, some maths is involved (sorry).
So, George Bremner’s gansey has alternating bands of diamond lattices and chevrons, divided by the usual 5-row bands of 3 purl rows alternating with 2 plain knit rows. The diamonds are 25 rows deep, and the chevrons are 17 rows. I plan to have three bands of each, making six in total, more or less following the original.
Restaurant kitchen window, with reflections, Groningen
This gives me (25 x 3 = 75) + (17 x 3 = 51) + (5 x 6 = 30), or a total of 156 rows for the yoke. Although it varies depending on the yarn I’m using, I tend to average 12 or so rows per inch: so, 156 rows \ 12 = 13 inches for the pattern.
As the gansey is going to be 24 inches from the top of the welt to the top of the shoulder, and as I usually make the shoulder 1 inch (or 12 rows), that means that the yoke pattern plus the shoulder strap = 13 + 1 = 14 inches.
Therefore, 24 – 14 = 10 inches: so I start my yoke pattern after knitting the plain body for 10 inches. (Which I have indeed just done.)
I dare say there are easier ways of calculating this, but this works for me. It seems very precise, but different yarns throw out my row gauge. It’s more of a guideline. So we’ll see how well this works. I can always run the pattern into the shoulder strap if I need to, or do a few extra pattern rows at the top of the yoke (as the original has), so for now we’ll hope for the best and finagle it when we get there…
You’ve got to love that shelf in the window. It probably had a story when it went, will have another when it comes out and perhaps one or two in between.
Hi Dave, It’s sagging about as much as my middle these days!
The Wick story sounds a bit like the workers taking over the company store!
Hi Tamar, I find the whole economic shift fascinating. It starts with the merchants in control, and to an extent they remain in control, except as you say that the workers start to control the means of production and can auction off their goods to the highest bidder. If only Marx and Lenin had taken Wick as their model, the world could look very different today…
Lovely colour .. can’t help thinking if the world was knitting and working out rows required there would be no war..perhaps that’s the answer for the great reset…
Hi Meg, someone once described humanity as apes with smartphones, and I’m afraid there’s probably some truth to that! We’re not necessarily as evolved as we sometimes like to think…
Thank you for posting how you figure the rows in constructing a gansey. I’ve knit quit a few and still am unsure when to begin the gussets. I’ve ripped out my knitting more than once to get it right. The initial measurements are crucial, and then the question – should the gussets start before the yoke pattern or at the yoke pattern. That’s when I get into trouble – because the width of the armhole also is determined at this juncture. I’ve been
beginning the yoke pattern further down on the chest for a woman’s sweater because it doesn’t look right otherwise. I have to draw it to get it
straight in my head, and reread your “Techniques for Knitting” – so glad it’s there to refer to.
Well that proves I do get confused – should say
“should the gussets start AFTER the yoke pattern or at the yoke pattern.” Yow!
Hi Rebecca, my knitting technique is always a work in progress, and has evolved over time.
If I can, I start the yoke when I start the gussets, 12 inches from the shoulder join. (The only reason for this is because I have a tidy mind, and find it pleasing to divide a gansey that is 24” from the end of the welt to the shoulder join exactly in half.) But many Wick ganseys had ribbing up to the navel (give or take) and then started the pattern from there. The original of George Bremner’s gansey clearly starts a couple of inches below the armholes, roughly where I’ve started mine.
In short, there’s no right or wrong way. If you knit it, it’s a gansey!
Hello Gordon,
I just discovered your website, and it’s wonderful! It may be sacrilegious, but I am trying to find a source for patterns like the one you show above, to use on a child’s dress. I have borrowed the Gladys Thompson book, but it is extremely difficult to see the tiny charts in an ebook. If you can make any suggestions, I would be most grateful. Many thanks.
Amy
Hi Amy, nothing sacrilegious at all! They’re just patterns, and were used for adults and children. It’s great to think these traditional patterns are having a whole new outing over a hundred years since they were created.
Have you tried the Gladys Thompson ebook on an iPad, with the Kindle app? I read it that way, and if you pinch-and-expand with your fingers to enlarge a picture or chart it will open it as a new window, making it much clearer. Alternatively feel free to browse the Gallery/ Gordon’s Ganseys section in the top menu – most of the ganseys in there have a pattern chart, which you’re free to make use of any way you see fit. Best wishes, Gordon
Thank you so much, Gordon, for those excellent suggestions!