Cats!

After I lost Oscar I didn't want to replace him for a long time but I do miss having a cat. 

My daughter was the same after her cat Zara had to be put to sleep. However she decided she would get two rescue kittens and here they are, Ginny the tortoiseshell & George the ginger tom.

                                     

Claire bought a sort of  tree house for them & below George is coiffuring his tail in the top section. The cushion needed to be covered so I made a cover & then crocheted another multi coloured one to go on top. George laid claim to the top of the tree!

It has a lower crescent shaped section & Ginny seemed to be relegated to it. I made a cotton cover but shrunk from doing a crochet one.

Eventually I gave in & made a crescent shaped one. Not exactly perfect, I had no pattern. 

As you can see below it was an instant success & was much appreciated by Ginny!

 Mostly I have been knitting & crocheting with the charity craft group. I like knitting these as they can be made so quickly & look so sweet.

It's hard to believe but this wool we have been using is really cheap and it's lovely quality. We've been getting it from Poundworld I think, I always get mixed up but I think Poundland do wool too. It's only £2 for 3 balls, amazing quality.

I'm still struggling on with the gansey I'm ashamed to say. I'm blaming the bad light as it's very difficult to knit navy wool in artificial light. I make too many mistakes! Also the fact I hate doing circular knitting. I'm on to the sleeves now & have had to abandon the circular needle & go for a set of aluminium couble pointed needles which I can manage a little better but I still don't like thid type of knitting. Would have been much quicker to just knit the pieces separately & have seams, I never mind sewing things up. Also you can hide the ends of the wool in seams much easier! 
Now the days are getting longer I'm going to have to do more or pardon the pun I'll miss the boat!

It's growing!

Well it's not going too badly.

The rib was a double one & I decided to cast on using double wool to strengthen the edge. Eric's wool jumpers always seem to wear on the cast on ribs especially the sleeve edges. It did make it a bit bulkier but I hope it will be much stronger and last the length of the journey.

Next came the Blyth Tall Ships logo which wasn't too easy to see in such dark wool. Definitely have to knit it in daylight.

Now I am on a stretch of plain knitting for 50 rows. A bit boring but at least I can watch telly whilst knitting. Feel a bit guilty knitting during the day but needs must!

The thing I really dislike about this is knitting on a circular needle, I find it a pain. The knitting keeps turning and you keep having to slide the loops over the cable join. Give me straight needles any day. I was tempted to buy a set of 4 needles but I'm not keen on that either. I did try to buy some really nice quality Knit Pro needles as I already have a cable but they don't do size 2.75! Never mind I hope I can get over it although I doubt that very much as I've used them a few times and just gave up. I don't have a choice with this jumper though, no seams allowed!

Next stage is the waves, should be fun!

Meanwhile the charity knitting goes on. 

I've knitted a couple of brown V neck tank tops as we used to call them in the 'sixties. Think they call them slip overs now. It's an awful colour to knit with dark brown, again difficult to knit in the dark. However it's for an orphanage in India & the jumpers will get dirty and dusty and won't get washed very often. So it has to be that colour for the poor little souls.

Also still knitting for the neo-natal units in the area and the Apostleship of the Sea. These crochet little tops for tiny babies are quickly made and it's a nice break from the dark colours. The hats for the sailors supported by Apostleship of the Sea are quick & easy to knit too. 

Well back to the gansey while the light is good!

It's here!

 My Williams Gansey Pack has finally arrived and it's brilliant.

I posted about it a few weeks ago What's a Gansey? and it tells about the recreation of the historic voyage in 1819 where William Smith set off from Blyth in Northumberland and discovered Antarctica. Sadly he's never had recognition for this so the voyage in 2019 will hopefully go some way to changing this. I applied to be a knitter of ganseys for the crews who will take the ship Williams ii to Antarctica and was successful.

There's absolutely everything you need in the pack to make the gansey. Wool, two sets of circular needles, a project book with all the information about the Williams Gansey Project including a written pattern, there's a diagramatic pattern, there's an envelope to post it back to them & even three pound coins to pay for the postage!

The Frangipani gansey wool is beautiful, a really dark navy which seems slightly thicker than 4 ply but finer than double knitting. There's a huge 500gm cone and three 100gm balls. 

I'll have to do a test piece first to see what my tension is. It'll mean daytime knitting as I hate knitting dark wool in artificial light.  Thankfully it's very light nights for the next month or two so that will help.

There it is sitting in its own box just waiting for me to start. So I'll just nip off now before it gets dark!

What's a Gansey?

                                               
Photograph courtesy of Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums

It's a seaman's knitted jumper (also called a guernsey) as it originated in the Channel Islands centuries ago. The fishermen needed warm jumpers which would resist sea spray and rain so they used wool with a tight twist and were knitted on small needles to give a tight tension. 

The chap in the photo above is wearing one but it's not part of a prisoner's uniform! He was a fisherman who was arrested in North Shields for stealing some money from a bar in a pub in 1904. No he wasn't sent to the colonies, he was fined 10 shillings!

The use of the ganseys gradually moved north and into Scotland and as they did so the patterns which were originally plain gradually became more complicated. They were traditionally knitted by the wives and daughters and patterns were designed for specific villages. Some families had their own designs which enabled them to identify a fisherman in a case of drowning.

So what's this got to do with this post? Well in 2016 the Tall Ships arrived in Blyth, Northumberland on Friday as part of the 60th North Sea Regatta and I posted about it here.

In January 2019 a crew is due to set sail from Blyth, Northumberland to recreate the journey of a local man William Smith, who discovered Antarctica in 1819 but was never credited.

Some keen knitters from Blyth, Astrid Adams & Janice Snowball successfully applied to Northumberland County Council's Community Chest fund for funding to knit ganseys for all the crew on that trip. They were successful, However their research showed that although other areas in Northumberland had gansey patterns Blyth didn't have its own pattern so they set out to design one incorporating the Tall Ships logo, waves, rigging ladders, anchors & the Northumberland flag. 

They put out a request for knitters to produce the ganseys. The knitters will receive a kit which includes the special gansey wool, needles and the Blyth pattern. The ganseys take approx 150 to 200 hours to knit but there is plenty of time as the voyage doesn't start until January 2019. There is also a hat pattern for those who maybe don't get accepted to knit the gansey or feel that a gansey is too much of a commitment.

Each gansey will have a label with the knitter's name on it and the crew member who receives the gansey will be encouraged to write to the knitter. 

I've always wanted to knit a gansey as my Dad & brother were part time fishermen but the wool is very expensive & I mean expensive! So I applied about a month ago & apparently the project managers were inundated from applicants from across the globe. I didn't hold out much hope of being selected but today I got the invitation to be a gansey knitter! So I'll be looking forward to receiving my kit in the very near future and I can't wait to start even though I have a trillion balls of wool stashed away all over the house. Hopefully I will get around to knitting another later for my brother!

You can see the details of the project and pattern photo on the County Council website here. I wasn't sure about the copyright so I didn't copy the photo.

Before anyone asks, no the bloke on the Blyth gansey photo on the Council website doesn't come with the kit!