On Saturday I paid another visit to Raigmore Hospital in Inverness—a journey our poor old car has made so often that now when I get in, all I have to do is say “Raigmore” and, like some elderly hackney cab horse out of Dickens, the engine starts automatically and it practically drives there itself. This time it was a trip to Dermatology to look at the variety of lumps and bumps that have sprouted upon my face over the last few years like the less hallucinogenic sort of mushrooms.
I’d been referred by my doctor about 14 months back—funnily enough it was about these that I’d gone to see her, and it was only in passing when she questioned me about my cough that I became a “person of interest” (as the FBI charmingly put it) to throat cancer specialists. Just before Christmas I got a text from the NHS inviting me to fill an online form about the referral, which went something like: (a) has the problem gone away on its own in the meantime? (b) have you resolved it yourself, say by means of a YouTube video and a pair of gardening shears? Or, (c) do you really still wish to see a doctor? Nothing daunted, I ticked (c), hence Saturday’s trip to Inverness, and very grateful I was for the opportunity.
Along the path
And while I’m sitting in the waiting room, trying to concentrate on the opening paragraphs of Sir Thomas Brown’s 1658 masterwork, Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial, or, a Discourse of the Sepulchral Urns lately found in Norfolk (what do you mean, you haven’t read it?) let us turn our attention back to knitwear. For Judit has come up with another triumph, this gansey which uses a variety of patterns (diamonds, double moss stitch and others) in bands to very striking effect, and which shows again just how effective combining patterns like this can be. Many congratulations again to Judit, and many thanks to her for sharing it with us.
But now my name is called at the hospital. This was another 5-hour round trip for 10 minutes’ worth of doctoring, but it was totally worth it: basically, all my lesions are age-related, and—two of my favourite words just now—non-cancerous. One of them was, the consultant said, inflamed, so he opted to freeze it with a liquid nitrogen spray (strange how freezing results in such an intense burning sensation: “This may sting a little” he said, which I’ve discovered is the medical term for “This will feel like I’m burning your face off with a blowtorch”). For the rest, well, they’re not pretty, but I can live with that. Suddenly I don’t have anything particular medically to worry about. Suddenly to have a stash of over 20 ganseys’ worth of yarn no longer seems like an indulgence…
Knitted herring at the museum
=======================
TECHNICAL STUFF
This will be a replica of another elaborate Wick gansey found in the Johnston Collection of old photographs. I’ve knit it before, in the same colour (Frangipani Sea Spray) and the finished article has pride of place in Wick Museum’s gansey display. But this is a commission for a friend and the sizing is different, so I’ll need to be a bit creative when I get to the yoke pattern. But sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, so meanwhile I’ve cast on 384 stitches for the K2-P2 welt, increased to 396 for the body (for a chest size of 49 inches in the round at 8 stitches to the inch), and am about to start the K3—P-K-P-K-P—K3 ribbing for the body. (And if that doesn’t teach me that life is stern and earnest, and we are not put here for pleasure alone, I don’t know what will…)
That’s a good color to show off the stitches. It shouldn’t be boring. How did you know it was k2p2 ribbing? The cuffs seem to be the same as the body.
Hi Tamar, we have access to the high resolution images taken from the negatives, and in most of them you can see every stitch. The cuffs have ribbing alternating with a sort of miss stitch. Indeed, I’m fascinated by the way the Caithness knitters seem to have looked at cuffs of k2/p2 and gone, “nah, we can go WAY further than that!” And really gone for it.
Reading my first post from the author, I can comment, I really enjoyed the writing and wit!
Hi Cynthia, glad you found us! Hope you continue to find the blog diverting, or failing that, a useful way to pass the time while you wait for the kettle to boil.
Always good to get the medical clearance – yay! Beautiful Wick VI gansey. I’m finishing a finicky pair of gansey socks – why did I think that was a good way to practice design and using Frangipani? Almost done and then off to Beth Reinsel Brown’s workshop before I start my first gansey. No long afraid of tiny knitting needles and 5-ply yarn, so that’s a good thing.
Hi Betsy, I’m starting to feel rejected by the medical community, they don’t seem to want to see me any more (*sob*). My last consultant even said, “It’s not you, it’s me, I’m just going through some things right now…”
I hope you gave fun with Beth’s workshop – she’ll steer you right and get you launched in style!
Hello Gordon
I’m living in a North facing bungalow with poor light and struggling to see the purl stitches on my Polperro gansey. Do you have a daylight lamp? Or is your house filled with light (and laughter)? I don’t fancy knitting outside just now at minus 2 degrees but I don’t want to end up with holes in my hoop nets
Hi Rita, great to hear from you! Our front room faces south, so in the summer the room is filled with light. In the winters of course it’s filled with hyperborean gloom and sobbing. I don’t have a daylight lamp, a proper craft one, though it’s on my list, but I do have a pretty good standing lamp directed over my shoulder. Plus in winter I try to knit light colours – I’d never attempt a navy gansey between November and February these days!