It’s one of those things you just don’t think about. It’s there when you need it, so you use it. It’s his, but I often wear it if I need something warm when working outside in the winter. Gran (his paternal grandmother) knitted it; I knew that much, and I’d guessed it was a gift when he was younger because it’s relatively small. It’s a sturdy, quite glossy wool (with my new-found knowledge I think it’s a longwool) in a peculiar shade of pale mint-green with flecks of pink. There are a few errors in the pattern stitch, and the seaming looks like my first efforts. There’s some staining where the collar rubs the wearer’s neck, a lot of pulled threads, the cuffs are fraying, and a felted scrap of red wool knotted into the fabric distinguishes the back from the front.

When I came across it yesterday in my search for some other sweater I thought to ask how old it was. He paused and looked thoughtful. “Ohhh, probably about 1966”, he said. A Christmas present, probably, because no one in their right mind gifts woollens for birthdays in high summer. I commented on the rough seaming and asked whether Gran learned to knit late in life (I scarcely knew her, as she died in the early 1980s not long after we moved to the UK). He looked surprised. “She knitted all her life. Perhaps it was her arthritis? She’d needed two sticks to walk for as long as I can remember”. I thought about that. He was born in the early 1950s. Decades… DECADES of walking on sticks, living with pain. I thought of a picture I’d once seen of Gran as a Land Girl during the First World War, tall and slim in trousers(!!), smoking a cigarette and laughing.

I remember Gran sitting upright, poised and elegant in her hospital bed: she flatly refused to be seen by anyone until the nurse had applied her face and done her hair. I think of her working painfully, slowly, knitting sweaters to keep her grandchildren warm when they moved in 1961 to distant, cold Canada. The wear and stains show this one did sterling service over the years. I remember him wearing it under a down vest (we’ve still got that, too) standing over me and laughing when I fell over cross-country skiing, back when we were courting (a quaint phrase). That sweater is a memory palace in its own right, deserving to be packed away in lavender but… that’s not what it’s for. We wear it. Because it’s warm and it’s there when we need it.

By contrast something disgracefully pretty:
This will be the ‘Cherry Leaf Shoulder Shawl’ from Victorian Lace Today, a gift for someone who loves these colours. The yarn is Handmaiden Mini Maiden, a silk/wool blend, in ‘Periwinkle’. The yarn is lovely, soft with a silken sheen, just a trifle splitty – but perhaps that’s the pointy Addi lace needle. The pattern is an easy knit so far, although I’m a bit nervous about what will be my first knitted-on border. The Gairloch Socks are at the heels, where I’m discovering that 2-colour knitting *flat* is no fun. I think I need to learn to purl from the front. Alternatively I could abandon all this… my birthday present arrived early, yesterday. I have a copy of Cat Bordhi’s New Pathways for Sock Knitters AND several (I’m too embarrassed to count) skeins of STR. And then there’s work proper, trailing the field of desires… I must be strong. Perhaps one day this shawl will be a memory palace for someone.

Incidentally the knotted bit of yarn on the left is a quick&dirty row marker. I slide the xth loop onto the needle when I start on the xth row of the pattern; finish the row, move to the x+1th loop. Exceedingly easy, more accurate than my old row counter, sadly not an original idea, I picked it up on Ravelry (sorry).

Dear Mother,

Do you remember the strange, mis-shapen ashtrays I used to bring home from the summer ceramics kids classes? The vases that only held water and flowers if they were braced upright with plasticine? Well, this is the fibre equivalent of one of those ashtrays. It’s the Wool Peddler Shawl from Folk Shawls, handknit by me from my very own, very first handspun yarn project, a blend of alpaca and silk. I confess I am quite proud of it; I’ve been told it’s very good for a first yarn. The silk shines in the autumn sunlight and the alpaca is already developing a fine halo to trap the warmth. While down on my hands and knees to pull guard hairs from the blocking shawl, I spotted some additional content. There’s cat hair of course (what do you expect from this household?), and I’m sure I found some of mine and some of his, too. So we’re all here, holding you and keeping you warm on cold winter nights.

Happy Birthday!

I’ve learned a lot from spinning and knitting this shawl, more than I’d have thought possible when I began it. The improvement in yarn quality is quite literally palpable: I just wish that I’d thought to BEGIN the shawl so my earliest effort was hidden in forgiving garter stitch, instead of resorting to it at the end where the stockinette lace is less forgiving. I spun this painfully, boring-ly slowly: I started within a fortnight of acquiring my wheel at the beginning of March, and I didn’t finish the 600m of 2-ply until the end of June. I think it’s [up] reasonably consistent in weight and fineness because I refused to try to push for more speed. [down] There’s some inconsistency in the grist, which shows in the way the stitches move. But I went from [up] loving the roving to [down] really disliking some of the singles to [up] liking the 2-ply and loving the garter stitch bit… until I discovered how the convoluted track of knitted yarn pushes any stiff material ([down] the cursed guard hairs) up and out of the fabric. I have actually spent 5 HOURS working over that shawl with tweezers, pulling out guard hairs. The top of the shawl that will sit on the neck is soft and hair-free, but the lace where the extra twists hold the hairs is still a bit prickly. I. Must. Assess. Roving. More. Carefully.* But the shawl is still beautiful and I am still proud of my accomplishment.

Another almost-accomplishment, lots of ups and downs:
Yes, some of you have seen some of that before. It’s Kinder Scout again, a fortnight ago. Isn’t the heather lovely? Imagine entire hillsides and hilltops covered in those colours, blending heather-purples and greens and browns and golds. The patchwork of fields is the Edale valley, with a train that reminds him of a sequence in Spirited Away. We’ve walked that long ridge (Lose Hill to Mam Tor) beyond the valley, there and back again; this time the plan was to walk around the Kinder plateau. Sadly the long drive means a late-ish start, made 30 minutes later because we lost the will to walk when we smelt frying bacon. Two bacon&egg buns later we began at a cracking pace; not deigning to follow the path, we shot straight up a clough (water-cut steep ravine) and onto the path. We were going quite well, even with regular stops in hope of preventing his knee problems when he slipped and fell, scraping his shin very badly indeed. Nobly insisting it didn’t hurt (once the agony of the disinfectant had ebbed), we continued a bit more slowly. The blood trickling down his leg sparked several comments from other walkers; apparently someone walking ahead of us had a similar but far worse injury. By about 1500 we were on the northern edge with a stunning view. Glossop and the outskirts of Manchester were faintly visible in the haze (but not in that image).
The sore bits. You can just see the blood on his shin. My foot rates mention because I’ve discovered that the swollen joint of my big toe is arthritic, with restricted motion (hallux limitus) and it’s occasionally aches deep in the joint on hard walks like these. I’ve started investigating treatments. Here we both found a generous serving of gorp most efficacious. Look at the heather on those hills! Sadly, as we marched on we realised that if we did the full circuit we’d be as late down the hill as we were up it and home much, much later after the long motorway drive. So we bailed onto the footpath over the top and made our way back to Edale. This doesn’t bother him much, but I’m a completist [not so much for music, but very definitely for SF authors. And possibly walks, it seems]. Not doing the entire circuit is niggling at me like a, a hangnail. I have to do it right, I have to FINISH IT even if it means getting up at 4am!

Next, more knitting. I have some yarn… OK, I have quite a lot of yarn, but I have some yarn in my hands for the Next Project: the Cinnabar Pullover from IK Fall 2007. It may not have a v-neck (it’s for the winter!) but it does have waist shaping. I’m working on the courage to add some short-rows for the bust; I may have to, as I’m seriously considering the 37″ and I’m a 38. I must check the hip widths and I know I must recalculate the stitch counts for a different gauge. I’m going to knit this to fit. And I’ll finish it.

* The person who knows alpaca fibre has just seen it and says it’s not bad for guard hair. Really. She showed me some commercially available alpaca roving that is just stiff with them. Absolutely horrid stuff.

None at all. Just work and sitting and knitting and reading and stuff. I’m sure I’ll get around to cleaning again sometime, but fibre is just so much more… exciting :-)
If I had a picture of my Wing o’ the Moth shawl I could show you a picture, but the first attempt (6-ish repeats) was frogged earlier this week. I have learned another lesson: USE A ROW COUNTER or ALWAYS STOP IN THE SAME PLACE. I put it down thinking I’d have no trouble remembering where I’d stopped; two days later I’d completely forgotten. Let’s assume that’s due to having more interesting things to think about rather than old age, shall we?

What else is happening? It’s raining.

I’m marching slowly through the garter stitch section of the Wool Peddler’s Shawl, wondering why I started with my best, most even handspun when I’ll want it for the stockinette lace-ish bit at the end. And cursing the guard hairs. I now understand why so many people say alpaca is prickly. Most of the Tuesday spinners have adjourned to afternoon garden-spinning parties for the summer break; I and one or two others who work during the day have started to spend an occasional evening of beer and fibre at the pub. Try to imagine the faces of the regulars at the bar when I marched in with two bags of books and yarn and fibre, bought a half of Broadside and settled down to drop spindling while waiting for Lyn. Such fun! I hadn’t realised that she has alpacas, real live ones, and I learned a lot about judging alpaca roving that evening. All of mine has some guard hairs, and the silk blend I love has more than most. As I knit the handspun the ends of the hairs are forced up, out of the fabric, and they are incredibly prickly. I’ve started pulling them out with tweezers as I knit: I want this to be soft and comforting, not a penance. I was going to be incredibly witty here and post a picture of the Cyclamen cilicium currently flowering in the garden, but the camera would not co-operate. Now I’m wondering why such a lovely flower was named for a hairshirt. Perhaps it’s some other root entirely. Haha!

It’s still raining.
It’s cold enough that the heating came on last night with the room ‘stat set to 16C (the normal winter setting). I formulated a cunning plan earlier in the year: I will not buy another sweatshirt. Instead I will knit sweaters. Ha. Anyone else here on Ravelry? Have you noticed how few people, relatively speaking, knit garments? When I search for projects others have made with my stash yarn I find scarves. Hats. Gloves, mittens, socks. Shawls galore. But very few sweaters/cardigans. My own project file is full of socks and shawls. This. Must. Change. I have yarn bought to become sweaters and it WILL become sweaters. Soon, or I’m going to be cold.

But procrastination is the mother of invention. I have started knitting an Alpaca Thing. I have this medium grey Blue Sky Sport Weight Alpaca (11 skeins) intended to become an over-large cabled vest-ish sort of thing. 3″ into the project I knew it was a mistake: the fabric was too textured to show the interesting stitch patterns, too soft to pop cables, too drapey to hold a shape and the garment wasn’t a flattering shape at the best of times. I’d been thinking about knitting one of these anyway:

At least now I know what to expect when I see a picture of myself. This blogging thing is good for honesty :-)
That vest. Thing. It’s rather better In Real Life than it looks here: M told me it looked good on, and she doesn’t lie. Maybe the camo pants let it down?

It’s a rectangle of fine nylon mesh to which bits of fine wool have been ‘Artistically’ sewn/felted. There’s a close-up at left for felters capable of artistry. Top is at bottom (where my foot is); bottom at top, where a bit more mesh is visible and the really stringy bits are loose for a tasteful, slightly ethereal effect. The nylon gives it a bit of rigidity, so it tends not to hug the person wearing it. My alpaca version will undoubtedly hug and hang, but my theory is that if the folds are sufficiently generous and the fabric feels and looks good, the end resilt will be a different kind of elegant.
Here’s a plan view for the intrigued. I’m doing a 7-stitch moss pattern border all round; the fabric itself is Pinnacle Chevron (from Barbara Walker’s First Treasury), a reversible pattern that almost acts like ribbing to encourage folds but the chevrons look slightly cabled, and I really do think it’s working with the alpaca instead of against it. And it’s an easy knit, which is important: I’m working from the bottom up, which is something over 300st and every row takes ages. Each 110m skein yields a tad over 2″, which means 11 skeins isn’t enough. Luckily the shop has some left: another 3 skeins are on their way. I haven’t decided what to do about the armholes yet. They’re 9″ high, centred in the fabric. I was just going to leave longer (10-11″ slits), but I’m toying with the idea of picking up stitches and knitting sleevish things. Or making proper holes like what the original has. And I have to decide whether or not to edge the holes with moss stitch as well. More finished look, but possibly too finished.

I’ve got lots of time to decide… lots and lots of time. About 2 more skeins. I think I need some lace now, or socks. Just to cheer me up. Oh, look. A chocolate bar!

All those who emailed to ask how things were going. I’m a bit stunned, really: I hadn’t realised I had acquired so many friends in far away places. If I could, I’d host a party for us all. (Does anyone else script the music for things like that? I’ve even made notes about what those attending my funeral should be forced to listen to enjoy :-)

Yes, it’s OK. My in-laws left for Canada on Friday; father-in-law looking worlds better. Our house is now very, very clean: I have verified that, when stressed, I find stuff to do and do it to excess. The first thing I did whenever I was alone in the house for the last three weeks was clean something. Anything. Scrub the living daylights out of it. Talk about displacement activity!
No murders were committed, I did not bang my head against a wall publicly or privately. I did, however, hide in the bathroom with a book, I chewed my cuticles until they bled (sorry if that’s TMI), and I bought quite a lot of yarn…

Some of it rather expensive :-( That’s 1500m of Cherry Tree Hill ‘Orenburg Lace’ yarn in natural. I’ve wasted? spent? enjoyed? quite a lot of time trying to decide on a pattern that will do justice to it. I haven’t made a final decision but perhaps Three-cornered and Long Shawls will be helpful (is ‘helpful’ the right word?).

Lace is good. That’s the Swallowtail Shawl in Das Schneeshaf’s Marisilk, ‘Golden Bamboo’. I even enjoyed the nupps. The colour is very nearly right on my monitor: it’s a subtle grey/gold that almost exactly matches bits of my hair. Complicated lace is very good indeed as a distraction from whatever ails you AND (even better) it scares everyone else so they don’t talk to you. Or perhaps that was the fierce frown (of concentration) on my face? As soon as I’d finished that I cast on for Wing o’ the Moth but, as I waved farewell on Friday, the desperate drive to lace ebbed away. Summer’s over. There’s an autumnal edge to the wind, which smells of burning leaves and freshly ploughed soil. I must bite the bullet and knit some real clothing soon, things that will keep me warm. First, after a weekend spent listening to loud-ish music and eating our meals on the couch in front of the TV, I must do some work to pay for all the yarn. There is more, you know. It just hasn’t arrived yet!

In many ways. My in-laws were to have left today, but my father-in-law was poorly when they arrived and was hospitalised in a frantic rush that lasted 12 hours on Thursday. These were the travelling socks that day; I’ve put them aside to wait for happier times. I want to enjoy wearing them, not be reminded of hours spent sitting in Emergency Assessment. He’s improving, out of Intensive Care this morning, but I’d guess they won’t be flying home on Friday. I feel a growing need to lose myself in complex lace, a pattern that demands concentration. How about a Swallowtail Shoulder Shawl? I’ve never done nupps.

It’s true: yarn is sometimes better than chocolate. This is Marisilk, a sea silk from Das Schneeshaf (access the shop via the button at top left). I lack words to tell you how utterly beautiful some of Andrea’s colours are. This is NOT grey: it’s a pale bronze/gold-grey and I love it. It’s air-brushed! It’s gorgeous. I have another skein, a mixture of true greys as well. And some sock yarns. I was her first international customer and I wish I had a louder voice because her yarns deserve to be better-known. Or maybe not. Maybe I shouldn’t tell anyone. Let’s keep this a secret known to the favoured few, shall we?

When I need mindless knitting I can work on this:
Yes, that’s my handspun alpaca/silk. It’s going to be the Wool Peddler’s Shawl from Folk Shawls, started in part because I needed to show my mother-in-law how four yarnovers/row force the shaping of a triangular shawl. Why? Because she’s never knitted lace before. I gave her 1500 yds of Wollmeise superwash lace yarn in Rosenrot (dark). I’d meant it to be a gift to take home but, with her own copy of Seraphim and an Addi lace circular, it’s become a welcome distraction.

Medicinal yarn: apply as needed.

As in a very small festival of socks… Thank you to the people who emailed to ask if we were affected by the flooding: we are lucky in so many ways. If this area DID flood we’d be the first house under water but, as this part of the UK is drier than many notably dry places, we were fine. Just a bit damp under grey skies, depressed and over-worked. One bright spot in the last fortnight was the official Trying-On of his third pair of socks.

Yarn: Cross Lanes Farm Aran Wensleydale on 3mm needles.
Pattern: my own, stockinette foot just in case they can be worn in boots, leg is Stansfield 12 from ‘More Sensational Knitted Socks‘.
Comments: It’s official: “The best socks yet”. Clearly, when in doubt, make his socks snug rather than loose. Good for length and width, try a 14st heel next time: although that 10st heel looks fine when his foot is on the ground, it’s a bit pointy. The rule of thumb seems to be that however many gusset stitches appear if I M1 every second row for 2″, it’s the right number. I like simple.

Another bright spot was the arrival of a shipment of Wollmeise yarn. I’m torn. The colours are stunning: Claudia works brilliantly (literally) with blues and with red/orange. But… the yarn feels like Lorna’s Laces. More like cotton than superwash. However, hers are the colours in which I dreamed I was knitting Gairloch socks. So I am. Two at once, toe-up on 2mmm magic loop, holding both colours in the left hand. Co-ordination counts!
Here’s the toe and sole:

And the instep.
On the foot, because that’s where socks belong. In sunlight these socks just GLOW! They’ll be my winter house socks. Might be winter 2008/9, though :-)

The band-aid on the foot is a reminder of the bright spot that was the weekend just past. Forget stalking end-notes through the dense verbiage of archaeological papers, forget that relatives are coming to stay this week (Must. Clean. House.). Let the music wash it all away for three days. We listened avidly to everything from Last Orders and Show of Hands through Bruce Cockburn, Ruthie Foster, Ricky Skaggs to Toumáni Diabate and more. We stayed to the end three nights running, to listen and dance to CJ Chenier and one of my old favourites, Shooglenifty. Most years we do this by ourselves but this year we had the added pleasure of weaving our path through the music in company with a friend or two. Now? It’s Monday morning and we’re paying the price for showing those youngsters how it’s done. My feet hurt, my throat is raw from cheering and two more papers to be typeset arrived in the mail over the weekend. I don’t care. You only live once, make the most of it!

Soon… more socks. I’ve been spinning Teyani’s superwash roving in ‘Chain of Fools’ (Crown Mountain Farms), entranced by the never-ending changes in colour and the way that plying alters the palette. When Navajo-plied (at the bottom) the colours are too intense, but that two-ply looks a little, just a little, like the subtly multi-coloured handspun that I coveted so badly that I started spinning. I’m now trying for something slightly tighter, a bit more twist, to improve the wearing quality. I must, I really must knit something other than socks. But not this week. Excuse me, I must just go and put my nose to the grindstone.

But I’d prefer things the other way around. Ah, well. What it is to be an adult. Nonetheless, look: socks!

These are winter house socks for him, although my foot thinks that’s unfair. The yarn is interesting: it’s a pure Wensleydale Longwool aran weight from Cross Lanes Farm, bought at Woolfest because the yarn has a lovely sheen, is a perfect denim blue heathered with black, and I’ve been wondering whether Wensleydale would make a good sock yarn. I must have been a magpie in a previous life: I like shiny, worsted yarns that catch the light to show how the stitches flow in the fabric. And this is lovely stuff, shiny but soft, and developing a lovely slight bloom of loose fibre as I knit it. On 3mm needles (magic loop) it’s making a dense, soft fabric that I think I’ve finally got sized to his liking for his feet. I just hope it doesn’t felt badly during wear.

I’m beginning to feel the urge to knit a garment. Real clothing. Socks somehow seem a bit like ‘cheating’ now that I now I can knit them to fit me, and possibly him. I think I’ll want something more challenging soon. So why on earth have I just ordered more sock yarn? Because on Sunday night I dreamed of knitting socks. I frequently dream of knitting. How sad is that? I’m actually not certain it is sad; it may be that my knitting skills will improve because of it. Let’s keep thinking that, shall we?

Mindie, I bought two of the three patterns the Museum had for sale; the Gairloch diamond stitch pattern (charted) and another for a man’s sock with Scotch thistles decorating the wide knit panels in the ribbing. A similar pattern with the Mackenzie stag instead of the thistle had sold out (not that I wanted it). Anyway, I dreamt I was knitting the Gairloch pattern. But not in sane, traditional colours. Apparently my subconscious wants ‘Indisch Rot’ and ‘Gewitterhimmel’ from Claudia, the Wollmeise. Next week I’ll see if it’s possible to do this without going blind. If I need a break, I could use the prize I won for donating to Claudia’s MS Ride. Thanks, Rebecca!

I must say an even louder, more heartfelt ‘thank you’ to all of you for reading my words. It’s such an ego boost to read your comments, especially when I’m feeling down. Incidentally, I don’t know the best way to respond to questions in the comments; it’s more personal if I answer directly in another comment, but I don’t know whether you’re obsessive enough to check for an answer, especially when as now I’m so slow.

Catsmum [Everyone stop reading this and go see the quilt!], I can only approximate the Gaelic pronounciation. I’ve got a ‘Teach Yourself Gaelic’ course sitting on my desk, but it takes more concentration than I’d thought; [did you see that lightbulb?] I might be able to manage it while knitting, though. ‘Baosbheinn’ I can do, sort of, because I checked with a native Gaelic speaker. It’s my favourite of the Torridon mountains; I loved that long ridge even before I discovered the name means something like ‘magic mountain/wizard’s peak’ or, alternatively ‘hill of the forehead’. The latter because seen from the coast the western end looks a bit like a craggy, noble face. ‘Baos’, the first syllable, should sound like ‘bush’ but modify that ‘u’ with a hint of ‘e’ as it would sound in ‘besh’. ‘Bheinn’ is roughly ‘ven’, with a short ‘e’. I spent an entire evening muttering that name to myself so I can get it right. After all, names have power.

And now for something completely different. If you need a laugh and are in the right frame of mind, try lolcats. Some leave me cold, some make me smile and some make me LOL. [“Luke I is ur fathur”]. I’m also intrigued by the way such memes develop; Anil Dash has some thoughts on this here. And here’s me this morning…*

Your Score: Sad Cookie Cat

65% Affectionate, 37% Excitable, 75% Hungry

You are the classic Shakespearian tragedy of the lolcat universe. The sad story of a baking a cookie, succumbing to gluttony, and in turn consuming the very cookie that was to be offered. Bad grammar ensues.

To see all possible results, checka dis.

* Believe it or not, I actually threw the last half packet of Bourbon Cream biscuits (my favourites!) in the bin last night to prevent them following the first half down my throat. I can has cookie? NO.

A bit like Slow Food, I hope. One of my capillary-feed drawing pens has started flowing too fast, so I have to stop frequently to allow the lines to dry. It takes about 15 minutes to enter the right mindset for other work and I don’t dare spin (time flies as fast as the spindle), so I thought I’d start drafting another post. Partly because I’ve got to acknowledge the laurel accorded to me by La Cabeza Grande…

And partly because I want to share my encounter with some knitting history.
The Gairloch Heritage Museum is well worth a visit. After our marathon walk we spent a wet morning trying-not-to-limp (we have our pride) through the linked white-washed buildings, looking at a classic assortment of village odds&ends assembled to tell interesting, coherent stories about the life of Gairloch. Those not interested in local history can examine a real lighthouse lantern (the glass structure that magnified and deflected the light of a single lamp to make it visible for 23 miles) in detail, up close and personal. It’s an absolutely amazing structure.

Pictures would make this far more interesting, but the Museum does not generally permit photography; the one I did take required a formal permit. There are displays of old photos, giving both Gaelic and English names of the people (no one could tell me why the different names were given, or when they were used. Sometimes the English was an obvious anglicisation, more often not). The postmen and postmistresses were given pride of place, for they held the network of rural communities together. There’s a tiny village shop counter, a miniature schoolroom. At one end of the largest room a window opens into someone’s house. It’s full of wool. There’s a spinning wheel ready for use, carders and a basket of fleece. The sheets on the box bed are made of old flour sacks, 4 per sheet, covered with handwoven blankets. A handwoven shepherd’s plaid hangs on the wall by the door.

In another room a display takes the uninitiated from fleece to sock. Carders again. Fleece (possibly rolags, but I can’t remember now) to be spun stored in the coolest basket, resembling a large, very rotund (American) wicker football with a large slot at the top through which fleece is pushed/removed. There’s a spinning wheel. There’s a display of handspun beautifully dyed using local dyestuffs. There’s a cabinet containing socks and a Sock Top sampler(!!), a long cylinder demonstrating various options for the tops of socks. Quite different from modern socks: all the ribbing had much wider stockinette ribs (roughly 1″ wide) than purl (1/2″ or less). The socks are thick and long, probably over the knee. All those I can remember were knitted in two colours, in variations of a pattern of diamonds (squares on end) filled with a uniform texture. This is apparently the Gairloch Knitting Pattern. I won’t describe any in great detail, as the Museum sells their own knitting pattern booklets and might object: I don’t want to offend them, I honestly admire what they’re trying to achieve. If they’d like to produce PDFs to sell online I’ll generate them gratis.

Here’s part of the photo I took. The display is ostensibly of the wooden sock blockers on which wet socks were dried, but my eyes were drawn to the darns on the well-worn heel and foot. I’d like to think this sock was knitted and repaired with love as well as wool, but I suspect desperation was involved.

From the mid-1750s Scots left the Highlands voluntarily or were forced to do so. Life was hard at the best of times in a landscape where every fertile corner was already supporting someone; besides this, the former clan chiefs were becoming ‘Lairds’ on the English model, charging rent for farmland and finding other ways of raising money, such as pasturing lucrative sheep on what had been small farms. The Clearances reached their height at the beginning of the 19th C. Many of those forced off their land had no alternative but to leave Scotland. Those who stayed were usually allocated crofts, new land in settlements planned by the Laird. Some crofts were deliberately made too small to support a family, forcing the crofters to work for the Laird to earn cash for necessities. All the small farms had to produce as much food as possible: enter the potato. And, from 1845-1849, potato blight. I hadn’t realised that the Scots crofters relied on potatoes to the same extent as the Irish.

I think these may have been ‘lazy beds’, ridges created by covering layers
of seaweed and bracken with soil and leaving it to rot over the winter.
In spring seed potatoes dibbed into holes in the ridges would produce good crops. Usually.

“in Gairloch, where the tenants had ‘a little meal [oats or barley] or milk in the season of it’, the food of the poor was herring and potatoes” (Malcolm Gray, The Highland Potato Famine of the 1840s). The resulting famine was devastating. The poverty of that economy is hard to imagine even when you’ve walked the landscape. Most people lived on what they grew themselves, relying on the sale of one or two cows every year for cash. The Lairds of Gairloch were among those who created jobs for local crofters, to be paid in oatmeal. Men worked 8 hours a day, six days each week building ‘Destitution Roads’ such as the road along Loch Maree; for this they received 24oz per man, 12 oz per woman and 8oz per child.

What has this to do with knitting?

While the men laboured on the roads, the women knitted. Lady Mackenzie of Gairloch even brought an expert from Skye to improve the quality of local knitwear: in 1847 she was said to have over 100 women spinning 490lb of wool per week to be knitted or woven. Eventually she built this into a local industry (more information is in the museum leaflets). Now I’ve got to go and choose(!) what we will enjoy for dinner tonight. Herring and potato aren’t on the menu.

Gairloch Harbour seen from the sea

I’m told that’s what I used to say when I was much, er, younger than I am now. And somewhat smaller. We’ve been in Scotland! Camping! In the rain! (no surprise there if you know Scotland :-)

That’s me, grinning inanely. With luck you can’t see just how silly I look when happy even if you click for big. If you can, feel sorry for him: he says that’s my characteristic expression. That’s a 35l Atmos pack loaded until it squeaked for mercy. It weighed about the same as his half-full 70l which is to say about 20-25lb. We very quickly became accustomed to the weight, even when hauling it up and down trackless mountainsides (this was An Adventure), which is a credit to Osprey‘s designs. There was knitting in my pack, but no knitting was harmed during the adventure: shortly after that photo was taken, things got much more interesting very quickly indeed. See the next hill, just behind me?
That’s the view from it. We planned to camp near that loch, which lies at the western foot of Beinn Alligin. The plan (when we left at 0645 on a sunny morning 9hrs earlier) was to pitch the tent, amble up Sgurr Mhor (the peak at right obscured by cloud), and have a leisurely meal followed by knitting. What happened was that the cloud fell like a stone down the mountainside as we walked to the loch. The rain started just as we unrolled the tent and within about 5 minutes it was bucketing down. The tent was up as quickly as when we pitched it on our lawn (the only other place we’d ever put that tent), we dumped our packs in the vestibule and hurtled over them into the tent in record time. There followed a night of weird contrasts. GOOD: enough water in our hydration packs to cook our dehydrated dinners. BAD: I have never, ever eaten anything more utterly disgusting in my entire life. And I write as someone who’s eaten really cheap bologna and sandwich spread, octopus sashimi, soil (I was younger then) and loads of flies (happy cyclist!). GOOD: tent didn’t leak. BAD: Constantly checking for non-existent leaks. GOOD: Blissful night of warmth wrapped in my new down sleeping bag. BAD: I accidentally used his (thicker) sleeping pad, so he wasn’t as blissful. GOOD: watching the @**! midges trying to squeeze through the mesh panels. BAD: listening to the @**! rain hammering on the tent all night. Cut to the next morning
That picture’s not as bad as I feared. For 5am. Can you see the rain? We could hear it… Worse, our planned route out led along the ridge of Baosbheinn, which was almost completely hidden in mist. Not a good time to walk it for the first time. So we decided to retrace our route in, with some trepidation because the cloud was brushing even the 650m summits of the hills we’d walked (there were alternatives, including a short emergency escape route to the Torridon road, but we decided we could cope with the conditions). At one point my worst fears were realised: the cloud dropped so densely we couldn’t sight the next landmark. We were standing 3/4 of the way up a high hill, the only people for several miles, with visibility less than 10m, known sheer drops somewhere to our right and unfamiliar extremely steep slopes to our left. A fall of only a few metres can kill. I felt sick. I wondered if we’d made a Really Stupid Decision in choosing to retrace our route. I wanted someone to tell me what to do… but there was just him, who knew no more than I. So we kept calm and worked it out for ourselves. The ‘escape route’ was obvious on the map if not in the mist: there was a straightforward compass bearing that would take us well out of our way, but safely down to lower ground. So that’s what we did. I tell you, the sense of relief when we broke out of the cloud was, well, it was amazing. Total distance walked: c. 34 miles, at least a third of which was bush-whacking. We arrived home tired but triumphant and, over corned beef hash, agreed we’d keep the tent and the sleeping bags. We’re already planning the next expedition :-)

Baosbheinn seen earlier in the day. I want to walk that long ridge so badly…

Sadly we’d wrecked ourselves a bit, so we took it easy for a couple of days. Intermittent, frequent showers would have made for unpleasant walking anyway. I finished the Electric Sox:
Pattern: Sidewinders, a PerpenSOCKular Pattern by Nona
Yarn: Colinette Jitterbug in ‘Jewel’
Modifications: this is only a 260m skein. Having finished, I think I’d probably have run out of yarn if I hadn’t shortened the leg by 7 stitches, but I do think it could have been shortened by less. If I did it again I’d try reducing by 4.

We did the wildlife boat trip, we made a pilgrimage to Knockan Crag. We read. And I spun.

Didn’t I mention we stopped at Woolfest on the way north? He didn’t know either, until after I’d booked it. Our first fibre festival. Togetherness. Listen to the hollow laughter of all the men patiently following their partners. They all have the same glazed eyes, bemused expression. A bit like people in a dentist’s waiting room. He didn’t *enjoy* most of it, but there was some interesting stuff and he did occasionally touch fibre voluntarily and almost, almost persuaded me to buy an 8g Bosworth. I was good. I got everything on my list and relatively little else, a bit frightened by how easy it would have been to blow a lot of money. I did not buy the discounted yarns (Rowan, DBliss, Noro): I wanted stuff I’d been watching online for months. Like that baby alpaca from Fyberspates, patiently becoming a light fingering yarn. I like spinning. I like spinning a lot. I really, really like spinning with a spindle, especially with a good drop from a rocky seashore. And a glass of wine.

Even when you’re not having fun.

I can still remember the look of utter exasperation on my mother’s face when, many years ago, I whined about being bored. Ah, those golden days when summer holidays lasted forever, or at least until school started. No time for boredom here, and no golden days either: it’s grey and cold and wet, but at least we haven’t had any flooding. I’ve been apologising to my sweetcorn, though. I think it was expecting sunlight.

Stuff is happening fast and furious here as the countdown to holiday continues. I’m trying to herd cats encourage clients to finish some work projects so the transition from holiday back to Real Life is less painful. For us it happens on the 12-hour drive home from Scotland. Glasgow is the transition point: south of the city conversation ceases as we both remember things we’ll have to do the next day. I hate that. It’s even worse after two weeks away, because that’s long enough that ‘holiday’ is becoming Real Life. I was going to say ‘We won’t make that mistake again’, but we might well: if our knees hold out and we enjoy wildcamping, then we might do the West Highland Way next year. Where are we going this year? Torridon and points north. What are we taking? Well, there’s bound to be books, some food and some clothing and walking gear but mostly I’m considering knitting/spinning projects. The Sidewinders Socks I are finished:
And a second pair is just past the halfway point:
That’s Colinette Jitterbug in ‘Jewel’, the yarn I wanted to be Jaywalkers. I think of these as the Electric Sox: they’re painfully bright in full sunlight. (I look forward to seeing my mother-in-law’s face when she sees them.) Joanne, I understand why you (and many others) have given up on Jaywalkers: I failed several times to get a fabric I liked and a working pattern variation to produce a sock that would fit me. Jitterbug is just too thick for that pattern on my feet. Also, a word of caution: the skeins are less than 300m. Which is short. Too short to make socks for him, for example, and I shortened the leg of this Sidewinder by 7 stitches to be on the safe side for me. Looking at the leftover (I always wind the skein into two balls for socks), I would probably have run out if I’d tried the full length. I could save the second sock for mindless knitting: I could almost knit these in my sleep now. And grafting stockinette will never frighten me again.

I could start a shawl:
I’m rather pleased with that. It’s the first time I’ve spun sufficient handspun to make something: that’s over 600m of 2-ply fingering weight alpaca/silk. It’s precisely the weight I wanted (I’m so proud); it could be just a little more tightly twisted, but I love it as it is, soft and with a gentle silken sheen. It’s going to be a birthday gift for my mother. I really should make a final pattern choice and start knitting BEFORE I succumb to something else for me. But I think it’s too valuable for what could be rough handling, being stuffed into and out of a pack. I’ll just have to have a look through the stash and make some decisions. This is where Ravelry comes into its own: I spent about 2 days (yes, I should have been working) in total photographing my stash and uploading the images into My Notebook via Flickr. Now I can see what I’ve got and whether it’s enough for, well, anything. If you want to see, search for cinereous and you’ll find me.

That’s Slioch, on the north side of Loch Maree. One day, possibly soon, I hope to take a photo to pair with this one: looking down on the mere mortals parked beside the road. Incidentally that photo was taken on the warmest October day on record a couple of years ago. This year we’re thinking of taking our architectural raingear. I call it that because it’s like a house, complete with windows and ventilation flaps and so far it’s kept us perfectly dry even in horizontal rain in November. Look on the bright side, I say: midges HATE rain.

Now: nose to grindstone, or more accurately, eyes to monitor. Illustrator awaits :-(