Post 6: Both kinds of yarning

No action on the home front in the past couple of weeks, so the focus for this post is books and knitting. In other words, I will tell you about the stories (yarns) I’m reading, and the wool (yarn) I’m knitting.

First, the book: Chicks in Chainmail, a collection of short stories about brass bras and battles. I’m not far in yet, but it came highly recommended. From the yellowed pages in my new copy, I’d say it has been in a storage shed somewhere since it was published in 1995.

Chicks in Chainmail is the first of a series with similarly cheesy titles, offering a spirited feminist take on tales of action and adventure. I’m not sure that it could be called a parody, any more than “equal pay for equal work” can be considered a parody of the concept of payment for work. The stories all feature strong women who like to get into the thick of it all, rather than simpering about fighting for a decent breath because their corsets are so tightly laced. Which is not to say that women shouldn’t wear corsets..they are absolutely entitled to wear corsets. The point is whether a given woman wants to wear a corset, or whether she’d rather rip it off and head out into the fray. That’s the point.

I’m on the second story, “And Ladies of the Club” which is about the unfair taxation of brass bras, which are part of the warrior women’s battle dress – unfair because the brass clothing designed to protect male warriors’ soft bits is not similarly taxed, being considered a necessity. This was written pre-tampon-tax-debates, so it’s quite prophetic really. The warriors engage a plastics wizard to enact a spell that removes their breasts when they need to go into battle (hence requiring only flat armour and avoiding taxation) but, helpfully, returns the breasts for their down-time. This seems entirely reasonable to me. Breasts can be a lot of fun, and extremely useful for feeding bebbies, but when it comes to running, for instance, they’re a damn nuisance. Not to mention hand-to-hand combat, I guess…I have less experience with that.

Chicks in Chainmail is an easy read, and not to be taken too seriously, although it’s got a bit of bite as well. I suspect that gender debates have widened quite significantly since it was written, and it feels a bit dated, but that must be a good thing, right? Although I look around me and wonder whether it really is all that dated. We seem to be fighting a lot of the same battles still (brass bras notwithstanding).

So, to wool, the other type of yarn. And I really am using wool – 100%. I’m attempting to make a gansey, or guernsey, as traditionally as I can. The yarn is Frangipani, which is grown and milled in England specifically created with ganseys in mind. I have three cones, 2 x 500g and 1 x 250g. The reason for the cones is that there’s minimal need for joining and sewing in ends (yay!). It does mean that this is not an easily transportable project, though.

A gansey is a working person’s jumper, knit in 5-ply/sport on very small needles – I’m using 2mm, to get gauge – so that it creates a tight, nearly waterproof fabric. This is also why it’s in 100% wool: warm, dry, something to wear in freezing temperatures when out on the fishing boat or (given that fishing’s not big in our dam) feeding the chooks in winter.

The first step is to make two welts (like flaps at the bottom of the garment). I used the Channel Island cast on, which is a new technique to me. It involves using three strands of yarn, just on the cast-on row, to give a tough and hard-wearing edge for those rugged blokes out on their trawlers. That said, it also gives a knotted appearance that is quite like picot, and actually surprisingly decorative for such a no-nonsense jumper. After the cast-on row, you drop the extra two stands and continue with just one, as usual.

The welts are knit flat, one front and one back, then joined together and followed by a band of 2×2 rib. Then the jumper is knit in a straight tube up to the armholes, with a column of two purl stitches on each side (“seam stitches”) which will feed into the underarm gussets. I’m a long way from the gussets, though.

The gansey is in a single colour, and I’m making this one navy blue, one of the traditional colours. In contrast to the colour work that I’m more familiar with, this uses knit and purl stitches to create designs that have significance for the individual wearer. PJ’s initials are in the process of being knit into a section just above the band, and then it will be all plain until the armhole, when the fun really begins – trees, mountains, anchors, wedding lines, all sorts of symbols that make this about him and our life together. More of that later on…for now, here’s a picture of the Channel Island cast-on in progress.

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And maybe by Post 7 there will be a new roof to show off!