The gansey knitter's kid finally has a gansey*

(* Actually, I finished it a month and a bit ago, but as usual I am late to the blogging)

I am a little embarrassed to admit that this is the first sweater I’ve knit him. Somehow I pictured having a child as an endless excuse to knit little sweaters, and yet somehow that didn’t happen…

I have made up for it with the gansey, red as per the boy’s request, with some very charming bee buttons from Katrinkles that I snapped up years ago when we were vending at the same event. I always meant to use yellow and black threads when I sewed them on to make them proper bees, but when it came time to sew them on I grabbed what I had. I rather like them with the dark blue, even if it makes them a little less bee-like.

i always thought the phenomenon of parents and kids dressing alike was some sort of imposed weird ego thing on the part of the parents, but it turns out the boy really wanted a gansey that looked like his dad’s and he loves that they have the same buttons.

The kid regularly sleeps in his gansey, and thankfully we are having a very delayed summer so he can play in it a little longer. Although between the boy’s desire to wear it no matter what, and the German tendency towards overdressing small children, it’s possible it will get worn over swimwear.

Actually I wrote that as a bit of hyperbole, but the gansey over swimwear thing would probably extend the swimming season nicely. Wet ganseys are basically the knitwear equivalent of a wet-suit after all.

Gansey, with the very functional armpit gusset.

The wonderful green pants he is wearing are called Matschhosen (mud pants). All children here wear Matschhosen over their normal clothes when they play outside in all but the warmest, sunniest weather. The coated vinyl is perfect playground armor, impervious to mud, sand, rain, sticks, and it makes kids slide down the slides really fast. And it keeps the pants worn underneath clean and tear-free. The coated vinyl is basically a lighter weight version of the pants worn by fisherpeople, lobsteringfolks, and tall-ship sailors, which to my eye makes a playground full of German kids look a bit like a bunch of very short, under-aged water-front workers getting up to no good.

(Also, apologies for the disjointed nature of this post. I really wanted to post gansey pictures, but this morning has been full of the pitter patter stomp of a very excited toddler/kid, running in to show me things/tell me things/ask me questions, despite the best efforts of his dad to let me have an hour to myself.)

local yarn store found!

I finally found the local yarn store, and more importantly, this week I finally managed to be there when it was open. Compared to what we are used to in America, Germans have a different tradition of business hours. Shops (including grocery stores) are closed on Sundays. Many small shops, including the local yarn store, are also closed on Saturday, or are closed by noon on Saturday and by four on weekdays. Add to that the Covid lockdown restrictions, and it feels like I have spent most trips to the city center staring longingly through the window of closed shops filled with things that I would really like to look at (toy stores, pen shops, book stores, fabric stores, antique stores, etc). But I did finally manage to bike by the yarn store at a moment when they were open and the Elf King (in the pull-behind bike stoller) was in a good mood.

Fadenwohl is a lovely small yarn shop with a nice selection of commercial yarns in a variety of fibers. The current owner recently bought it from the previous long term owner, and is in the process of working through previous inventory while bringing in newer yarns. She has a small amount of lovely local wool from one producer and hopes to bring in more.

I managed to restrain myself on the wool buying front, but a display of recycled three ply cotton yarn prompted a desperate need to learn to crochet (I have no idea what came over me - I blame our echoing white walls and our second hand white Ikea furniture; I will cover it all with bright cotton doilies). So now I am watching YouTube tutorials and ripping back as often as crocheting forward, and remembering why I never crocheted back home. And yet still I can’t seem to stop. Travel is for learning something new?

I am still searching for the traditional local yarns, and for the spinners and the weavers. I have a fantasy of finding some crazy East German fiber artist collective, preferably housed in a semi-squat in one of the older industrial buildings on the outskirts of Jena, committed to preserving old fiber traditions while exploring newer ideas, and maybe some blacksmithing, and a few obscure musical instruments. Really I want to find a semi-underground Bauhaus with a fiber focus.

In the meantime, doilies.