le Tour de Gansey, part deux: Epilogue!

Thanks to my husband happening upon the appropriate sort of card reader in our lab while he was at work today, I’m actually able to share with you, complete with photos…

Epilogue

On Saturday, we took my parents up to Lake Ontario, since they had not seen it except for a few minutes the last time they were here, when it was extremely cold and we’d just had a blizzard. It looks very different when the weather is warm. Unfortunately, it was extremely windy and our visit was cut short by impending thunderstorms (funny note: the announcement made over the speaker system was that there were “electrical storms, including lightning”, which I found amusing for its redundancy), but we did get some photos of me modeling my finished gansey (in mid-80’s temperatures with extremely high humidity, because I am perfectly willing to suffer for my knitting, apparently!). So here you go:

Pattern: My own, using techniques described in Beth Brown-Reinsel’s “Knitting Ganseys”
Yarn: Bartlett Yarn Fisherman, in “Dark Jade” (4.75 skeins)
Needles: Size 8 Knitpicks Harmony circulars and dpns
Time to knit: July 5th – July 25th, 2008

I love it. It’s perhaps not the most flattering garment for a petite person who is already built such that her shoulders are broader than her hips, what with the drop sleeves, but it’s a very traditional shape for a gansey, and I love it ridiculously. I plan to wear it a lot once the weather gets cold (while it wasn’t actually as uncomfortable as I expected in the warm, muggy weather on Saturday, I don’t intend to make a habit of wearing wool sweaters in the summertime).

I have really enjoyed the whole process of knitting a gansey, from learning about the techniques and history, through charting my own pattern motifs, and (most especially) knitting the whole thing in the span of 3 weeks. I’m still sort of amazed that I was able to do that, actually! That said, I’m not so sure I feel the need to try such a feat again any time soon; if I’m being totally honest, there were a few times when I knit past where I should have, in terms of wrist/finger pain, and that’s just not smart, especially for someone who already has joint problems. It’s been fun to blast my way through a project like this, but really, I think it would be very healthy for me to slow down a little bit. I’ve got all this yarn to knit through, after all; it’s not going to disappear if I don’t knit it fast enough!

Well, I could probably write some more, but for now, I will leave you with a little retrospective photo mosaic, of all the highlights of this little Tour:

Thanks for following along on my journey through the Gansey! I’ve loved having everyone’s feedback, and I hope I’ve kept things entertaining! I’ve sort of forgotten how to blog about anything other than the Gansey, so we’ll see what the next few weeks of blogging bring.