Originally published May 25, 2007
About 20 minutes further up the estuary from Dunbar on the Firth of Forth is the lovely seaside village of Aberlady. It is more sand, beach and golf course than the gritty working harbour of Dunbar and so it calls for a gentler design in a sea going sweater.
This is also a village from my husband’s childhood. When the family didn’t go to Dunbar, they went to Aberlady for holidays. In fact my sister-in-law once bought the main floor of a house in Aberlady when she thought that she had grown tired of Edinburgh. Fortunately, we had a chance to visit the house before she sold it – she really could not live outside of Edinburgh – liken to San Francisco as “everybody’s favourite city.”
Well, I LOVED the house!!! It had a garden that went down to the sea!!! The garden had been neglected for many years and yes, it would take many years to tame it – but when you walked to the bottom of your garden you had the sea. The house, as I remember, was covered in Clamatis and the sourrounding houses were also covered in flowering vines, shrubs, and blossoms of every description. Aberlady might well be consider the garden of the Forth.
I really should have chosen Fiddlesticks Knitting DK in Lady Slipper for the gansey with horizontal panels – however, we had more of the Teal yarn in stock and so we use what there is more of – lest we run out and cannot fill orders because we have indulged ourselves – we are never really free!!
I tried to capture the flowers and the vines in the horizontal motifs, I know that no fisherman worth his codspiece would be caught dead (literally) in this gansey – but what of the fisherwives? – surely they deserve a moment of respite from cables and herringbones.
Anyway, so far I have only had to rip back the front, because I had made the neckline too wide. I have since then finished the neck and picked up to knit the sleeves down to the cuff. I do see a problem ahead. I have to create the eyelet flower upside down. Hmmmmm – let me think about this. More photos later