Here we are. It’ll take days to say it all. This morning, I’m not even going to try to answer the kind comments left on my last post.

Here is a picture of the vegetable garden, taken yesterday morning. We had a better week, weather-wise, than the photograph implies. I had taken two dozen chitted potatoes along with us, and I planted them. They’ll probably be all right, too, potatoes being tough little cookies. We got various things done, including the turning of a few more spadesful of earth in preparation for seed-sowing if spring ever comes. No rhubarb yet. If it weren't such absolutely indestructable stuff, I'd be a bit worried.

There are lambs in the glen, in the village indeed, but not yet in our fields.

And I started Ketki’s gansey, using the pink yarn I bought recently from Guernsey Wool. I love it. Firm but not scratchy, very pleasant on the hand, great for stitch definition. When Ketki gets tired of banking and turns to gutting herrings for a living, she’ll find this one a welcome protection from the elements without being in any way burdensome.

Here’s the swatch. It’s unusual for me to make a swatch at all, let alone so elaborate a one. The actual yarn is a gentler pink than the photograph implies, without being sissy.


The pattern is “Mrs Laidlaw’s pattern” from Gladys Thompson’s book, “Patterns for Guernseys, Jerseys and Arans.” It is one of the very few in the book which is not charted but just written out line by line. I didn’t know, when I started, how to interpret that, so I began by just doing what it said: 1st row K5, p3, k1 etc; 2nd row K6, p2, k1 etc.

It soon became obvious that I wasn’t getting anywhere. The great thing about a swatch is that you don’t have to rip it out, you can just put in a row or two of garter stitch and try again. The initial mess can be dimly discerned towards the bottom of the swatch. I saw that I had to chart the pattern, and had what I thought a stroke of genius: I began by charting only the odd-numbered rows, leaving blank rows in between. Sure enough, I was able to see almost immediately that the pattern was written for knitting in the round. So, for my swatch, I had to start the even-numbered rows at the wrong end, and change k to p throughout, and vice versa. (And, yes, I know EZ would have had me knit a “swatch-cap” at this point. I didn’t want to, so I didn’t.)

And I got on fine, as you see. I’ve brought the book back here so that I can make a proper chart, perhaps in Stitch and Motif Maker, if I can find it; perhaps in Excel.

I spent a lot of time reading Brown-Reinsel, in the intervals of gardening. I have decided on an overlapped garter-stitch welt. We’re going the Full Monty on authenticity, here. Those rows of garter stitch on the swatch are on B-R’s instructions, to see if it spreads. It does, a bit, but the body of the sweater will have 10% more stitches than the welt, so I should be all right.

I am nearly finished, as you see, with the welts themselves. I am a bit worried about spread, and fully determined, if I don’t like the look of things when I’m four or five inches into the body pattern, to rip mercilessly back and start again. I think I’ve become a slightly better knitter in my old age, and if so, it’s entirely due to an increased willingness to rip things out.

Notice the little row of bumps at the cast-on edge. That’s a Channel Island cast-on, B-R again. I’m not much of one for learning new tricks these days, and I’m terribly pleased with this one.

The Scottish swan with Bird Flu which has been causing such excitement these last few days, was found in an East Coast fishing village close to Anstruther. Alas there don’t seem to be any gansey patterns in the books specifically attributed to Cellardyke.