Gansey Links

Recommended gansey books and links of interest relating to ganseys, gansey knitting, and gansey related maritime history. This list has grown out of research for a talk about gansey history at the 3rd Annual Boston Farm & Fiber Festival. Beware, my sense of “related to” is broad. Will be updated from time to time.

Books

(in the order I happen to have stacked them on my deck)

Gladys Thompson, Patterns for Guersnseys, Jerseys and Arans The original version of this book was published in 1955. She was perhaps the first person to “collect” and transcribe ganseys into written patterns for the wider knitting audience. Suggest using in conjunction with Beth’s book.

Beth Brown Reinsel, Knitting Ganseys (Revised and Updated) Contains a version of Elizabeth Zimmerman’s percentage method adapted for gansey design, along with a thorough explanation of how to use her method to design your own. Her book also includes a good history, an easy to follow collection of motifs, and several full patterns. The most user friendly of the gansey books. If I was to buy only one gansey book, I would buy this one.

Penelope Lister Hemingway, River Ganseys A very interesting survey of the history of a lesser known tradition of gansey knitting, combined with a good history of knitting in the British Isles generally. She does give a few gansey patterns, but I enjoy this book more for the broader research she does into the history, context, and technical background of gansey knitting.

Michael Pearson Traditional Knitting new and expanded Holy heck this book is worth it for the photos alone! Extensive history. Another “collector” of gansey patterns. Many written patterns given, but not necessarily in a format useable to first time gansey knitters. Would use in conjunction with Beth’s book for actual knitting.

Mary Wright, Cornish Guernseys & Knit-frocks Another of the “early collectors”, originally published in 1979. As the name suggests she focussed mainly on the tradition of knitting ganseys in Cornwall. Fascinating history, but from a knitting standpoint I would use this book in conjunction with Beth’s book if I was designing or knitting a gansey for the first time.

Sabine Domnick, Cables, Diamonds, Herringbone Great selection of motifs displayed both as samples and charted out. History a bit thin.

Websites - Gansey focussed

Gansey Nation - gansey.com Really the go-to site for all things gansey and the wonkiest of gansey discussions.

Propagansey - A festival of ganseys held annually

The Moray Firth Gansey Project “To find, record and conserve gansey patterns from around the Moray Firth coast.”

The Cordova Gansey Project Inspired by the Moray Firth Gansey Project, bringing the tradition of gansey knitting to the Alaskan Salmon Fishery and beyond.

Of Maritime Interest

Because this was a maritime tradition

Humber Keel and Sloop Preservation Society

video of the Humber Keel

lovely video about sailing a Thames River Barge with brief mention of the sort of regular voyages made up to places like Yorkshire

Shetland Museum and Archives

Of Linguistic Interest

Getting into the weeds of “Guernsey” vs “Gansey” vs “Ganzee” vs “Geansaigh” and “Geansaigh snåth” and remembering that there are three languages and many dialects of each spoken in the British Isles (not counting Cornish which went extinct as a first language at the end of the 18th century, though attempts at reconstruction began in the early 20th century). Yup, it’s a fascinating linguistic soup.

Highlighting this post from Gansey Nation for the fascinating discussion in the comments.

Doric

North East Scots (Doric) History Present and Future : of specific interest, the comment that farmers and sailors in Buchie spoke slightly different Doric

A longer Ted Talk about Doric (and also neurolinguistics and the importance of the language you speak)

Of General Knitterly Interest

How to knit faster (using a knitting belt) - I am a process knitter and don’t for a moment believe that knitting skill and knitting speed are the same thing; but knitting speed is a knitting skill, and contract knitters could attain amazing speeds using knitting belts, knitting sticks, or sometimes twists of straw.

The Start of a New Gansey

(Or rather, the start of blogging about the new gansey; the actual gansey has been in production for about a year now. As of this writing I’ve divided for the upper front and back. As always, I would rather do the thing than write about the thing).

The release of Beth Brown Reisnel’s updated Knitting Ganseys made my fingers itch to knit another. One day, when I can better concentrate on crossing cables, I will knit Beth’s Snakes and Ladders (designed with Upton Yarns Coopworth 5-Ply Gansey yarn) for myself, but at the moment much of my knitting takes place in cars, or in a dimly lit room while the toddler sleeps, or when the toddler was still small enough to fit in a baby wrap, around the bump of sleeping baby in front of me. In these circumstances horizontal motifs of seed and moss stitch are soothing and occasion fewer dropped stitches and muttered bad language.

Sam has been the beneficiary of my gansey knitting impulses twice before, but both instances predate Upton Yarns. When he fell in love with the steely like blue gray gansey yarn on my drying rack it seemed time to remedy the Upton Yarns shaped hole in his gansey wardrobe.

This colorway has been christened “Falling Waters” after my favorite hiking trail in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. I have spent years at sea knitting ganseys meant for service in a maritime environment, but with this gansey (now that I have walked inland with my metaphorical oar) I am setting out our intentions to relearn the New England mountains we grew up in. While a little heavy to carry on long hikes, ganseys are great for shoulder season day hikes.

The Swatch

I am an impatient knitter, or rather, I am a knitter who is impatient to start working on the actual piece. I do not swatch as much as I know that I should. Upton Yarns has actually helped me with this; previously I could never really figure out what to do with the swatches after their initial use in garment planning was complete. I am a process knitter and generally knit for the love of feeling yarn move between needles, but even so swatching felt like a speed bump on the way toward the really satisfying work of creating a garment. Now, swatching has become a way of creating little inspirational pieces that fit on my display table when I go to yarn events. Swatches help other people imagine their own creations, and as such I have discovered that I love the pressure-free act of creating them. When I swatch I’m not trying to “get gauge” or concerned about trying to fit the yarn to a pre-existing design, I’m just moving the yarn from one needle to the next and seeing what it wants to be, experimenting with different motifs to see how they fit the yarn, and how the yarn fits them. Freed from expectations, swatching has become one of my favorite ways of knitting.

When I started thinking about this gansey last year, I was usually knitting around a sleeping baby in the baby wrap. It turns out that swatches are perfect for this kind of knitting. So I got carried away.

I swatched until I ran out of yarn. This is what one 240 yard skeins looks like when knit, or rather as much of it as will fit in frame. There is an additional six or so inches of stockinette with the wearer’s initials, and a garter stitch welt with channel island cast-on just below the bottom edge of the photo. The whole thing is about as long as my arm, and if seamed would be a reasonably fitting sleeve. I cast on a bunch of stitches (66? I did not keep good notes on the swatch) knit the welt I knew I wanted to use, the stockinette and monogram that I also knew I wanted to use, and then turned to pages 42-3 in the updated edition of Knitting Ganseys. I knew that I wanted to make a relatively simple gansey full of horizontal motifs, possibly with a large definition motif at the top of the plain stockinette, or possibly not.

Pages 42 and 43 are a joy. (Actually, the whole chapter on pattern motifs is a joy, but the motifs on pages 42 and 43 are the ones that were most relevant to my design interests for this gansey).

Beth doesn’t include any photos of the motifs knit up on these pages, only the graphs, which makes knitting the motifs an act of discovery. I moved from knitting one to the next, knitting each for as long as I wanted to until I felt like I had a sense of what it would look like knit full size.

And when I finally ran out of yarn, I cast off my swatch and cast on for the full size gansey.