testing

Many apologies for the fuzzy-wuzzy macro, but I am so excited by this sort-of-secret-ish project I had to show you just a little a bit of it. This thing is one of the satisfying fruits of a collaboration with my favourite Scottish dyer, and my favourite Welsh yarn producer. Working on it has lifted my spirits during a week in which they’ve felt rather downcast. Have you ever worked a two-colour braid? They are immensely pleasing and simple to produce. I’ve been reading a lot about Latvian and Estonian textiles recently, and followed up my reading with some happy experiments in casting on and braiding. This braid follows the method described by Lizbeth Upitis in her “Mitten from the District of Latgale.” There is a sort of mystery to working braids — in their early stages they don’t look like anything much at all, but then they literally unravel into a thing of beauty. I love the way that the two working yarns become entwined, and then magically untwist themselves on the final row. This particular method produces a very neat braid with a dense, raised appearance, and is definitely the best technique that I’ve found so far. There are two different “elements” to this collaboration, and I am enjoying them both immensely. Indeed, I can barely contain myself from foolishly raving about them, but I will save that for later, so prepare yourselves. In the meantime, I wonder whether any of you might be interested in test knitting one “element”? If so, please drop me a line at wazzuki AT gmail DOT com. Also, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about shaping and sizing, and would really like to get some feedback on the Manu pattern, before I release it, from anyone who knits sweaters for themselves in the 42 to 50 inch size range. If that’s you, and you fancy test knitting Manu, please do get in touch with me at the same address.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I shall return to the pressing and incredibly tedious business of Getting Well.

of pleats. . . and i-cord

At some point toward the end of last semester, I became distracted in a meeting. There is nothing novel in this situation, except that the source of my distraction was a cardigan. My colleague, Kate C is a very stylish person, and often wears clothes I find inspiring and curiosity-inducing. This cardigan was both. It was a well-made machine-knit piece in a sort of egg-yolk yellow. The fabric was plain stockinette, and a neat fit was created with minimal shaping, except for a feature neckline, formed by a sunburst of pleats. These pleats were very pleasing. They set off the rest of Kate C’s outfit nicely, and made a focal point of the neckline that was both simple and elegant. How I liked those pleats! After the meeting, I talked to Kate C about the cardigan. She had bought it in New York, and, being a knitter herself, completely understood my fascination with the neckline. On the train home that evening, I thought about cardigan construction, and sketched up my own pleaty design. The challenge would be to create a simple garment as elegant and well-fitting as Kate C’s through the use of pleats and gathers, rather than conventional shaping. I drew pleats a-plenty and added puffed-out pockets and gathered wrists (which did not feature on Kate C’s original). Then I went to Skye and I bought this yarn.

You may recall that there were things that troubled me about this purchase. But despite my misgivings about the yarn, I knew that after swatching with it that it was ideal for my pleaty project. It had fabulous drape, some firmness and body, and a pleasing fuzzy halo. Then I did something that will suggest to you the sorry depths of my obsession with clothing and design. I found a dress in Fenwicks that I felt would suit the imagined cardigan ideally: a garment whose sole purpose was to set off an outfit that existed only in my mind. I bought the dress, and hung it in the wardrobe, where it remained unworn while it waited for the cardigan.

Then I began to knit. I began with a provisional cast on, and worked bottom-up, with minimal shaping through the body — just enough to give a slight A-line. The sleeves began with an i-cord cast on, were gathered at the wrist and joined at the yoke. I then shaped the neckline into a deep scoop with what, to myself and my knitting comrades, are known as “Sunday short rows” (so-called because Mel first encountered this technique in a design by the very talented Carol Sunday). These short rows are quite similar to the conventional Japanese method, but I find them much easier to execute and to describe. They are also the neatest method of working short rows I’ve come across, which was important, as I didn’t want traces of the turning points displayed across the cardigan fronts. I then knit the yoke straight to the shoulder line, and reduced two thirds of the stitches by working pleats. Until that point, I had felt like I’d been knitting a sort of giant box — but, as I pleated the top of the cardigan, the box suddenly transformed itself into a shapely garment. Here’s the neckline. I’m hoping that the only trace of the short rows you can really see is that sort of curved line two inches below the pleats.

You will note that there is i-cord around the neckline, and will be unsurprised to discover that i-cord features everywhere in the finishing of this garment. It is worked along the pocket tops . . .

. . . across the the bottom edge of the cardigan, up the button bands, and forms the button holes. . .

Please take a moment to examine the i-cord buttonhole. Note, if you will, what a neat edge it produces along a garter stitch border. Compare its superior qualities to those of lesser buttonholes. Observe how un-wonky an opening it creates, how there are no stray strands of yarn lurking annoyingly and untidily at its edges. Marvel at its ease of execution; utter a grateful encomium to Elizabeth Zimmermann; and assure yourself that your search for the perfect knitted buttonhole is over! Yes, I heart the i-cord buttonhole!

I found these vintage buttons on e-bay. I like the fact that they are made of glass, that they were (luckily) a precise tonal match for the yarn, and that they have been previously worn and used (as you can see from the button on the left).

When I finished knitting, I asked Kate C to name the design, as she had originally inspired it. She chose Manu, the name of the friend she was visiting in New York, where she bought her cardigan. So here are some shots of Manu from the side:

And a full-length, so you can see the dress too, which with its pleats and pockets, is actually a sort of echo of the cardigan.

I found the necklace in Philadelphia, where I finished working up this design. And Philadelphia has inspired another aspect of the pattern, which is now forthcoming. During my afternoon at Rosie’s, I had a chat with smart-and-interesting Lisa about garment design and sizing. She pointed out that my pattern size ranges were rather conservative, and didn’t really accommodate anyone whose body shape tended toward the Rubenesque. The good thing about this style of garment, it seems to me, is that it will fit and flatter most body shapes, including those who actually have a womanly chest, unlike myself. Women of all shapes and sizes successfully wear cardigans with this sort of yoked construction and triangular front opening — as can be seen in the range of knitters who look fabulous in Gudrun’s lovely Moch cardi, or Pam’s incomparable FLS. So, I am designing this pattern to fit a size range from a 30 to a 50 inch bust. More soon!

Name: Manu
By: me. pattern coming soon.
Yarn: Shilasdair ‘luxury’ DK in tansy/indigo.
amount: 3 and-a-bit 100g skeins. Approx 1000 metres.
Needles: 3.75 and 4.5mm. All worked with Addi turbo circs.
Ravelled here.

obliging

Last weekend I was lucky enough to visit Rosie’s Yarn Cellar, and spend a lovely afternoon with Jen, Jenna, Wendy, Magda, Lisa, and many other knitters. It was so nice to spend a few hours knitting and chatting in exceptionally good company, and when I left, they presented me with some good, strong, black leaf tea (which made me feel very at home as I had been, just that morning, cursing the generic horror of Liptons — whatever it is in those bags (cat fluff? ground-up egg shells? dust balls?) it certainly is not tea!) . . . as well as this marvelous vessel from which to imbibe my favourite beverage:

Hoot hoot! Thankyou, Rosie’s! I wrapped the owl in many layers and you will be glad to hear that he made it safely back across the Atlantic with me. I arrived home to find that a number of Very Exciting things had turned up in the post. First, a package of delight arrived from Hamburg. Lovely Viv (who loves neeps as much as me) made me these beautiful embossed leaves socks.

How fab are they? In the package were a number of other gorgeous treats, including some seeds, which shall produce actual — rather than knitted — leaves on the allotment next year. Viv, you really are a *star* – your socks made me very happy. Thanks so much!

And here we see the contents of another exciting package:

This is Liz’s beetheid, which she kindly sent on a brief trip North so I could see just how nice it looks at first hand. What I find really interesting (as I always do with colourwork) is how radically colour placement affects tone. The grey background of the ‘neepheid’ and the ‘beetheid’ are exactly the same shade (Jamieson & Smith no.27), but appear totally dissimilar — the purple / gold of the neep colourway, and the burgundy / brown of the beet colourway have brought out completely different qualities in the grey. ( Here are pictures of my original neep, and Viv’s super incarnation, if you, too, are interested to compare.) I love Liz’s beetheid — its so jolly and autumnal. It’s with some regret that I’ll return it in the post tomorrow. . . .

. . .but I’ve been keeping myself occupied, colourwork-wise, swatching like crazy, and repeatedly marveling at the remarkable things that colours do to one another. Here’s one favourite that I recently knitted up.

This is a swatch with a purpose. I made it wide and deep enough to fit my heid; added a knitted-in lining out of some exceptionally soft and cosy angora; and finished the edges with (you guessed it) icord . . .

This cosy, ear-warming headband constitutes item no.1 of my proposed entirely-woollen-winter-walking-outfit. I was looking forward to trying out its unique warming properties upon a windy Scottish hill . . . . But then someone got his hands on it first. . .

This headband is very practical, quick to knit, and clearly appeals to blokes as well. I now need to make myself another, which will prompt me to write up the (very simple) pattern. This will be a FREEBIE, and I’ll post it here later this week

And finally, as so many of you have been asking about The Shoes, I shall oblige you with the details: They are made by Red or Dead and are available here from Schuh. I saw my friend Mel in a pair a few weeks ago, and immediately had to buy some exactly the same as hers. At the top of this post, you can see my giant copy-cat hooves pictured alongside Mel’s neat, wee originals. Both of us agree that these shoes are exceptionally good for walking. They are also the sort of shoes that feel immediately foot-friendly, and require no breaking in. I like mine so much, in fact, I may well have to buy another pair in a different colour.

at lorna’s

Mel and I popped over to Lilith’s for some dyeing and some secret planning (oho! what fun!) Visiting West Kilbride gave me the opportunity to drop in on Lorna Reid again. If you haven’t heard about Lorna, it’s time you did. She’s the inspiring hands and brains behind independent design business, Chookiebirdie.

Lorna has a successful background in commercial textiles: she spent fifteen years creating sought-after floral prints, and counting some of the biggest names in the fashion industry among her clients. But, in 2007, she set up independently in her West Kilbride studio, where she now designs and makes beautiful hand-stitched accessories, toys, and textiles.

I love Lorna’s work. There are several things that immediately strike you about what she does: her use of colour, the quality of the materials she uses, the precision of her stitching and, in every piece, the same incredible attention to detail.

There is a pleasing simplicity about Lorna’s designs — in her bold use of both shape and shade — but this apparent simplicity belies the careful and thoughtful nature of her hand-stitched creations. You can see how she loves colour: how the pinks and blues in this Matryoshka are exactly the right ones. She also obviously has a very precise feel for the properties of fabric: how jersey might lend itself to the shape of a particular creature, or how felt enhances another design’s rounded edges and saturated hues. Every piece is individually made and because of this, each of her designs is singular, and full of character. From the largest hand-stitched panel to the the tiniest tree decoration, there are evocative details that draw the eye. I love how the dotty button on this jolly horse speaks to its neighbouring hand-stitched patches.

Many of Lorna’s designs have a nostalgic, wistful feel — compounded by her use of found or recycled vintage materials. I particularly like how she transforms old golf sweaters into her signature Scotties.

Lorna and Lilith (who we already know is brilliant) are what makes West Kilbride such an inspiring and interesting town: a place full of life, bustle, and creativity. At a moment when the media are gloomily sounding the death-knell of the town centre, and when to some the only answer seems the weird fantasy that’s being enacted in Poundbury (with apologies to Dorset Cereals), West Kilbride provides an instructive example. Here is a small town which, due to the presence of independent craftspeople in its once-empty shops, is starting to thrive again. (Also, it is probably just some sort of strange anomaly, but I swear that every time that Mel and I have visited, the weather in West Kilbride has been amazing — clearly the town is some sort of perpetually sunny craft oasis). However, the recent visit of the Scottish Culture minister only serves to highlight the question mark that currently hang over the future of its status as Craft Town Scotland. It is an initiative that deserves strong support — and especially that of anyone interested in independent craft and design. I suggest you go and see for yourself.

If you like Lorna’s work as much as I do, you can commission hand-stitched pieces from her, or just pop into her studio to buy something she’s stitched up already. Can you guess which creature I found impossible to resist?

it’s perhaps hard to tell from that detail . . . I shall pan out to its wee felt feet . . .

. . . indeed yes, it is an owl: stoic, inscrutable, self-contained. And beautifully hand-stitched, of course.

I know I am very foolish, but how I heart my owl.

more neeps . . . more beer

In a mysterious repeat of last week’s missives, today we have more neeps . . and more beer. If I am now inhabiting a turnip-and-beer filled time warp, there are probably worse places to be.

Here you see my entirely non-literal rendition of the turnip tops

and here, how the turnip roots feed down into the soil . . I mean, ribbing.

I am absolutely loving the Jamieson & Smith 2 ply. The colours are so rich and saturated – but subtle too. I spent a very long time admiring their shade card and selecting colours — my favourite here being the lovely mutating golden green (shade fc12) which works really well with the more solid green of shade 118. And look at its feathery soft halo! Hurrah for Shetland!

As with the dollheid, I found myself interested in the effects of a decreasing repeat – that is, in the way the several segments of the crown resolve themselves into circles. With the stems, section divisions, and decreases forming solid lines, the crown of the tam has a simple, formal element to it, which to me is reminiscent of the early styles of 2-colour Scotch bonnet that one often sees in museum collections (I’ll find a photograph at some point to show you). I also enjoyed playing the four colours against each other to create different neepy effects, and particularly like the way the purple shade (fc56) is quietened by the grey (27).

Here in another rather dimly lit shot (taken late yesterday evening after greenhouse watering), is the neep in situ on its allotment, surrounded by other neeps.

The pattern (which I am now working on), will of course be called neepheid. (I have ravelled the project here, and hope to have things ready to go in a couple of weeks time).

Now, in our house, swede is a favoured synonym for head (“look at your big swede” “your giant swede won’t fit through that door” &c &c), and I did wonder about the wisdom of a near-tautological name…but I like neepheid, so neepheid it is.

We are all familiar with the associations of heads with vegetables–we’ve all seen Arcimboldo’s fabulous creations. But turnips seem to be particularly linked to daftness or eccentricity, and this interests me. Do the roots (ahem) of this association this lie in the enthusiasm that surrounded the the four crop rotation system in the eighteenth century? I was thinking about some of the ways that William Cobbett was satirised, and of Pope’s account of Lord “Turnip” Townsend . . . and then I recalled a passage in Mark Twain’s Roughing It about the unfortunate affliction of Mrs Beazley’s son, William:

“Turnips were the dream of her child’s young ambition. While other youths were frittering away in frivolous amusements the precious years of budding vigor which God had given them for useful preparation, this boy was patiently enriching his mind with information concerning turnips. The sentiment which he felt toward the turnip was akin to adoration. He could not think of the turnip without emotion; he could not speak of it calmly; he could not contemplate it without exaltation. He could not eat it without shedding tears. All the poetry in his sensitive nature was in sympathy with the gracious vegetable. With the earliest pipe of dawn he sought his patch, and when the curtaining night drove him from it he shut himself up with his books and garnered statistics till sleep overcame him. On rainy days he sat and talked hours together with his mother about turnips. When company came, he made it his loving duty to put aside everything else and converse with them all the day long of his great joy in the turnip. . .”

The comedic nature of the turnip interests me here. And a similar kind of comedy operates to slightly different effect in the character of Uncle Monty in Withnail and I . I am mulling over various thoughts about this, but in all the examples I can think of, vegetable obsessions seem to be a symptomatic of a particularly masculine eccentricity*. But I am a woman, and am proud to declare myself a turnip obsessive. I have much sympathy with William Beazley’s view of the “gracious vegetable”. What’s not to like? You can eat both the roots and tops, they are easy to grow, and they are a tasty crop pretty much all year round! I love turnips in all their neepiness, and shall sport my neepheid with pride!

Ah yes, beer: I was going to talk about beer. Tom has been doing more brewing, and has also written up a recipe for you. We’ll save that for the next post.

*I would be very interested to hear of women turnip obsessives, in fact or fiction, if any spring to your mind.

if you brought a big brown bag of them home

. . . I’d jump up and down and hope you’d toss me a carrot.*

No prizes for naming that tune. Or for guessing which vegetables are inspiring my knitting.

*a clue: during one session, percussion was notoriously provided by Paul Mc Cartney chewing a stick of celery.

congrats

It’s Dollheid prize time! Congratulations to ten randomly-selected commenters: Celia, Luisa, Arndis, Lillicroche, Yulian, Maaike, Lizzi, Pat (J) and two Marias (one German, one Canadian) to whom I’ve just emailed a copy of the pattern. And thanks for all your comments, everyone, which I enjoyed reading: I was thrilled to discover that dollheid translates into Dutch as ‘frolicky madness’, and particularly liked Kristi’s tale of her psychedelic dream knitting — a phenomenon strangely familiar to those of us who Dream in Wool.

For those of you who are interested, here’s a little more about the design. The shaping is that of a traditional tam, but with a greater number of crown-points than is usual (eighteen dolls = eighteen points of decrease). I began with stitches to fit an average head circumference of 21 inches (those with very wee heads might knit the edging on a 2.5mm rather than a 3mm needle). The brim edging is worked in corrugated rib, and then stitches are increased rapidly to the finished diameter. Despite the relatively long areas of colourwork, I didn’t weave my strands at all — and found that the yarn stabilised quickly at the back of the work (warning: this will only work with a very even tension and a pure-wool yarn!). My finished dollheid is ten inches wide and eight inches deep – a roomy fit that would enable you to wear this tam in a slouchy fashion on the back of your head, as well as pulled down over your ear-tops (as I like it). Knitting towards the top of the crown, paired decreases are worked in the spaces between the dolls, and then in corresponding sets up through the crown pattern, until three stitches remain, which are finished as an i-cord stalk. Finally, I blocked the tam by pinning it out — rather than stretching it over a plate. This is simply because I find that putting a tam onto a plate over-stretches the ribbing, and I like my ribbing to stay as ribby as possible.

Well, dollheid is now “live” and if you are interested in the pattern, you can find it here or here. But I want to conclude this post with another congratulations — to Tom, who ran the Islay half marathon on Saturday in a speedy personal best.

Look at him go! More about our weekend on Islay shortly.

dollheid – prize draw!

Its amazing what a wee break from the daily commute can do to one’s all-round productivity. I’m happily working on several research projects at the moment, as I always do at this time of year, but I am also finding the spare time and energy to devote to designing. Can I just say how much I am enjoying it? Well, I really am. Here is the first of several forthcoming colourwork designs: Dollheid. Heid (pronounced heed) is a colloquial term for head in these parts, and the dolls are self-explanatory. Here is my heid in its dollheid:

Despite the expression, let me assure you that I love this tam deeply. I knit two other prototypes in different yarn, trying out different shaping methods, before this one was finished. With this incarnation – size, shaping, yarn, colour – I am totally and completely happy. I love the dusky tones of the yarn, and also love the way the yarn behaves. There’s no need for me to tell you how I feel about Shetland, but it really is the best stuff for stranded colourwork, and the Jamiesons relaxes and blooms really beautifully after blocking.

You will see that I have taken many of the design features of the paper dolls sweater — peeries, i-cord cast on, corrugated rib — and have incorporated them into the tam. All these things worked really well. Another thing I am pleased about is the way that the dolls have achieved a sort of geometric integrity quite apart from any representational qualities they may have. (Um, did I really just write that sentence? Lets try again:) What I mean is that one of the reasons they look so pleasing is that, when arranged in a circle around the crown of the tam, they suggest one abstract shape as well as eighteen dolls.

(Norah Gaughan writes about this geometric arrangement gubbins far better than I can). Anyhow, after some enjoyable wrestling with illustrator (one can produce such deluxe charts if one works at it! I’m amazed!) I am happy to report the pattern is just about finished (hurrah!), and I will release it on Monday. But before I do, I wanted to say a small thanks to all of you — for your encouragement and support of my designs — and I thought I’d give away ten copies of the pattern to ten commenters on this post. So, if you are interested in a free copy of the dollheid pattern, just leave a comment here, and I’ll pick the winners at random on Monday morning, August 3rd (my time) before I put the pattern up for sale.

Pattern: dollheid (by me)
Yarn: Jamieson’s shetland spindrift (25g Mooskit, 25g Peony, 25g Old Rose)
Needles: 3mm circs
Ravelled here

lyttelton

Hello! If you don’t come here for the knitting and are bored with talk of garment construction, stitch patterns, and the like, then my apologies. Move along please! Nothing to see here!

I can now report that another pattern is ready. This was a very interesting project for me, as it is the first garment I have designed in which I began by thinking about what writing a pattern would involve. Shrugs are pretty much a summer essential in my wardrobe: personally, I find that they are more wearable than shawls, and look neater than a cardigan over the dresses that I tend to favour at this time of year. Lots of knitters (like my sister) seem to make shrugs to match individual outfits, particularly those that they intend to wear at summer weddings. I’ve noted quite a bit of shrug-related discussion along these lines over recent months; for example here on stash and burn and here over at fig and plum.

Shrug-construction is an intriguing matter. Once one moves on from the basic idea of a side-to-side seamed rectangle, they can be formed in a multitude of ways: from centre to sides (as in Lisa Daehlin’s perenially popular Viennese Shrug), as a square or lozenge with a knit-on edging (as in Mel Clark’s lacy hug me tight), or in a novel modifed T-shape (as in Alice’s Ester). The diagram shows the construction I’ve used here. I started with a provisional cast on, knit up the back, increased stitches to shape the sleeves, put the centre stitches on hold for the neck, worked over the shoulders and fronts, and knit back down again, mirroring the back shaping. The seams are joined under the arms (where you don’t see ‘em), then stitches are picked up all the way round the front and back openings, and joined to those on-hold, before adding a ribbed edging which is worked in the round. The key to this construction is a stitch pattern that looks exactly the same right-way up and upside-down. I had such a one in mind, and built my shrug around a modified version of what Barbara Walker calls ’tilted ladder’, but which has other names elsewhere. This is the kind of lace-and-cable stitch that I really like. It is logical, it is rhythmic, it is fixed in my scatty brain after just one repeat, I can immediately see where I am in the pattern, and its so berloody simple even I can knit it on a train in a near-comatose state after a long day at work.

Its also one of those deceptive stitch patterns whose visual and textural interest suggests more complexity than it actually possesses. Ah yes! My very favourite kind. I’ve used a yarn with a bright, sharp stitch definition that I really like: rowan 4 ply soft. It shows off cables and lace superlatively well, is easy to care for, and comes in a good range of colours. One thing to note (if you are looking at the way the shrug sits in this photo) is that one of my physical peculiarities is a short torso, matched with comparatively long legs (long? who am I kidding? for I am 5 ft 2″). Anyway, the garment’s finished length is between 15 and 16 inches, and the back will look shorter on anyone whose torso is longer. There are just three easy fitting sizes in the finished pattern, which will accommodate any chest measurement from 28 to 44 inches. That’s it for the detail, then, but can I just say that from start to finish, this has been an immensely satisfying project? I enjoyed thinking about the design, loved knitting it, and am very pleased with the end result and indeed the finished pattern (though I do say so myself).

The design name is Lyttelton, and I shall now tell you why (though I fear my reasoning has a degrees-of-separation quality which makes it completely inexplicable). Here goes, anyway:
1) the pattern involves a lace trellis
2) the word ‘trellis’ kept popping into my head while I was knitting.
3) this put me in mind of Mrs Trellis of North Wales, the eccentric and mysterious correspondent of Radio 4’s long running antidote to panel games, I’m Sorry, I haven’t a Clue.
4) until his sad death last year, this show was chaired by the incomparable Humphrey Lyttelton, jazz trumpeter and comedy genius, who has held a place in my affections since my Dad took me to hear him play a gig in Todmorden in 1985.
5) this shrug’s for you, Humph.

Now to what you are all wanting to know if you have actually stayed with me thus far: where the hell were you throwing those shapes? Well, yes this is Scotland, and these photographs were taken a couple of weekends ago on Traigh Lar beach on the Hebridean island of Harris, a location of unique and tremendous beauty to which I am already looking forward to returning. That beach really is that incredible — the weather was hot, the sea was cool, the views were amazing, and there was no-one else around.

So to anyone who fancies knitting themselves a Lyttelton: the pattern is now available through ravelry or above from the designs page. And to my mother who has an unshakeable idea of Scottish island weather based on one blustery school trip to Arran many, many moons ago can I just say: Yes, Ma, Harris is just like Barbados.

in colour

I’ve been thinking a lot about colour of late, and about how closely one’s experience of colour is tied up with one’s experience of landscape. I had a conversation with Mel the other day — concerning the crazy hues of the lichens she’d seen in a particular West Highland location — and was reminded of another recent landscape encounter, and the incredible colours it involved. We enjoyed a fleeting visit to Lewis and Harris a few weeks ago (we will be back for a proper holiday later in the year – hurrah), and were lucky enough to visit the standing stones at Calanais. Stone circles are breathtaking spaces, of course, but among these stones at close quarters, what I was most struck by was their varying textures, shades and colours.

Human hands moved these stones into position more than four thousand years ago, but the rock from which they are formed is much, much older. This is some of the most ancient stuff in the world in fact — Lewisian Gneiss, more than three billion years old. For those of you who, like me, find geological time so mind-boggling that it is virtually meaningless, this rock has been around since before the earth cooled down and the mountain-wrapping work of continents began. Lewisian Gneiss is a metamorphic rock, with a foliated and coarsely granular character. And if you are wondering about my geological vocabulary, its partly from the GCSE I did many moons ago (thankyou, Mr Boardman), but mostly drawn from Hutton’s Arse , a book that I quite enjoyed — Malcolm Rider’s deeply dodgy politics notwithstanding. While I found his particular brand of localism offputting to say the least, he knows a hell of a lot about gneiss. Discussing some notable late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century geologists, Rider talks about how their accounts of the landscape of northern Scotland as monochrome and “sterile” really missed the point. The rock that at a distance seems to be a “familiar weathered grey” turns out at close quarters to be something else entirely:

“a closer look . . .shows that the gneiss has a fine banding on a centimetre scale, in greys, whites, and dark colours, beautifully picked out by a combination of ice smoothing and several thousand years of rain and weather. The climate of Scotland is very good at this.”
(Huttons Arse, p. 178)

Rider describes Lewisian gneiss as a “terrestrial mille feuille” and I remembered this when looking at the standing stones at Callanais.

I spent a long time looking at the intrusions of pink granite against the banded grey. And closer inspection of the stone revealed a shimmering mass of many colours: dark flecks of magnetite and mica, luminous quartz and feldspar. This is the composition of the rock itself — and then there are the hues of a changing climate — the stone folds weathered and darkened by wind and water; pale pin pricks of butter and pea-coloured lichen. Around the stones are purple and yellow and white wildflowers, and beyond them, the deep blue-green haze of the ground, lochans, and hills of Lewis.

The banded pinks and greys of the gneiss at Calanais have stayed with me, and I’ve been thinking about them more since I began reading Alice Starmore’s Book of Fairisle Knitting a few days ago. I’m still digesting the implications of Starmore (I lack the words right now) but all I can say is that the woman is a genius, and that her genius is bound up with the Lewisian landscape that surrounds her. There are many things to like about Starmore, but her eye for quotidian detail — for the beautiful and colourful in the ordinary — is really something else. The shades of this tam were inspired by those of a sprig of clover that had pushed its way through the cracks in a strip of tarmac. It just about kills me.

© Alice Starmore.