Wick (Thos McKay) – Week 26: 9 December

The first card of the season hit the mat a few days ago, heralding the start of Christmas with its mixed blessings of joy, togetherness, stress, and depression (not necessarily in that order).  It’s the time of year when the frenzied preparations bolt forward at breakneck speed, to hit the buffers of Christmas Eve with a screeching halt.  But that busy-ness makes us appreciate the relative peace that follows, the days when you can open your presents, sleep late, go for long walks.  Unless you’ve got a pack of dogs and a busy family, of course.  But we need that break in midwinter, when the nights are longest and the days shortest – to pause our normal routines of the old year and reset for the new. 

Sunlight reflections

To continue with the tale of my travels.  After the sojourn in Edinburgh, the last leg of the journey was the drive home.   It was uneventful, starting off sunny but ending cloudy and dark, with two stops along the way.  The house is still in one piece, though I haven’t looked carefully at the outside.  There was a dripping tap in the bathroom, and one of the stereo components is kaput.  The first is repairable, the second, probably not.  The car was unloaded, the suitcase hauled upstairs, plants watered while dinner defrosted in the microwave.  And then an early night.

When I left Caithness, it was still nearly summer, not quite summer but not yet autumn either.  The wheel of the seasons has turned more than a quarter since, and we are now in winter, with bare trees, chill winds, steely skies, muted landscapes.  At least the storms that gusted through Britain this past week did not reach us. 

Dusk

And finally – drumroll – the gansey is done and looks rather fine.  It’s taken far longer than it should, what with one thing or another.  But what’s a few weeks when this is the result?  The allover patterning makes it a showstopper.  The Channel Island cast-on and patterned welt are decorative, but don’t detract from the brocaded body.

The next bit of knitting on the needles is not – gasp – a gansey.  A year ago I was about three-quarters along knitting a lace jacket, but put it down because I couldn’t concentrate on it.  It has been eyeing me ever since, sitting neglected on the side table, wondering when it will be finished.  Now is the time to pick it up again.  So far, I’ve finished casting off the hem of the body and have started the i-cord edging up the fronts.  It’s knit from the top down, so the sleeves are half done.  I hope that by next week some progress will be made on them.

On the quayside