Ganseys

27th February 2022

(music)

Liz: Hello, and welcome to Bread and Thread, a podcast about food and domestic history. I’m Liz

Hazel: And I’m Hazel. We are two friends who studied archaeology together and love history, and making things, and the history of making things, and we normally like to start, before our main topic, by talking about what we’ve been making recently, so what have you been up to?

Liz: I’ve been continuing my short DPN adventures

Hazel: How’s it going? How is glove?

Liz: I made some gloves with a basketweave cuff

Hazel: Oooh

Liz: And matching basketweave hat, and I’m working on a basketweave scarf

Hazel: Oh that’s awesome, you’ve got a whole matching set

Liz: And I’m also making Nick some gloves with my short DPNs

Hazel: You just can’t be stopped on these tiny DPNs now

Liz: I’m gonna make so many gloves, I might make some socks

Hazel: All the fingers

Liz: I have the power

Hazel: You should make toe socks

Liz: I would, but the feeling of something between my toes makes me physically nauseous

Hazel: You should make me toe socks

Liz: Maybe I will

Hazel: (laughs) My toes will appreciate

Liz: I always say “if you don’t want something, you should give it to some toes that’ll appreciate it”

Hazel: Yeah, that is what they all say

Liz: Yeah

Hazel: Especially when it’s food

Liz: I think that’s a different podcast. What have you been up to?

Hazel: (laughs) I’m not entirely sure what you meant by that and I don’t want to find out

Liz: All I’m saying is Kellogg would disapprove

Hazel: Oh no! Ok (laughs) ok. Moving swiftly on. Again, not that much going on with me, I’m afraid. I’ve been…did I tell…yeah I probably didn’t. I’ve been knitting some handwarmers for my supervisors on my placement

Liz: Nice

Hazel: Because it’s a hand therapy team ha ha ha

Liz: I wasn’t even thinking about that, I just really love a handwarmer

Hazel: I also did do it because they’re small projects and I could finish it by the time it was my last day, but I’ve been doing that with just simple handwarmers, basically just a square that you fold in half and seam up the side, leaving a hole for the thumb, but I’ve done that with a mosaic stitch, so it’s got a bit of pattern, but it’s still quite simple, because I’ve been really tired and just wanting to do some simple knitting, but I’ve done that

Liz: I do enjoy that way of making a handwarmer, it’s basically like a tea cosy

Hazel: Yeah

Liz: It’s the same construction

Hazel: Yeah, it’s cute. I can use DPNs, but I just don’t want to right now

Liz: Oh!

Hazel: I’m enjoying the simple things at the moment. That’s what I’ve been up to, I will try and get a picture of those on the twitter. That’s nice, and then I’ve been chipping away at my quilt. I’ve not really been able to do any food history or otherwise related things, because I don’t have an oven

Liz: Yeah, that does make it difficult

Hazel: That is one of the things I’m most looking forward to about going home, is that I will get to bake things again, and roast things

Liz: Remind me to send you my Welsh cake recipe

Hazel: Oh, yes please

Liz: ‘Cause that’s a nice thing to do on a stove

Hazel: Oh excellent. I’ve been getting quite good at one pots. I did make a lovely Irish stew

Liz: Ooh

Hazel: Irish stew, find that hard to say for some reason, last weekend

Liz: Lovely

Hazel: With cheesy dumplings

Liz: I love a dumpling. I’ve said it before, we love a dumpling

Hazel: We’re gonna go out, on the record, as dumpling loving podcast

Liz: Hot political take

Hazel: (laughs) Dumplings are great. We said what we said

(both laugh)

Hazel: Yeah, so that’s that, really. But I do have a bit of a planned project

Liz: Oh?

Hazel: In the long run, which is gonna be the topic of this episode

Liz: Oh! Oh, before we get into the topic

Hazel: Go on

Liz: I do wanna shout out, we got, a while ago we got a lovely message on Tumblr from someone called Pumpkin, just saying that the podcast was really nice, and that made me really happy

Hazel: Yeah, that was lovely

Liz: But they have since messaged us again, and actually made a proper Tumblr blog to follow us, so I just want to say hi Pumpkin, we appreciate you

Hazel: Oh wow, I hadn’t seen that. That’s amazing. Pumpkin, you’re great, thank you for saying nice things about us

(both laugh)

Liz: I wanna put that energy out into the world

Hazel: Yeah. I will endeavour to post more things on the Tumblr. So, would you like to hear about ganseys?

Liz: I would

Hazel: I thought you might say that

Liz: It’s my favourite piece of knitwear

Hazel: (laughs) Have you, yeah, ok I’m gonna start actually by…ok, so if you’ve not come across a gansey, dear listeners, a gansey is a kind of jumper, or sweater, and it is a very distinctive kind, so I’m gonna go into that in a minute. Liz, do you wanna, ‘cause I know you’ve knitted a couple ganseys, do you wanna talk about the ones that you’ve made first?

Liz: A gansey is, I believe it’s a regional name for what’s often called a fisherman’s sweater

Hazel: Mm-hmm

Liz: Or an aran jumper, that kind of thing. It’s generally thick and cosy, and it’s got lots of cabling on. My second ever project was a gansey, because I am that kind of person, just went straight from a scarf to a gansey

Hazel: (laughs)

Liz: But yeah, you get them around, I think it’s the Aran Islands, hence aran jumper, aran yarn, and they have all these very complex patterns that are, I can’t remember if it’s true or not, but there’s a thing about them being geographically specific, and they’re just the cosiest, warmest jumpers, and I love them

Hazel: I am going to go into that. They look super cosy, and I’m really impressed with the last one you made, ‘cause that was just aargh

Liz: The Knives’ Out jumper, in my mind, counts as a gansey ‘cause it’s thick and it’s cabley, and those are the main qualifications

Hazel: Actually, even though it’s a very specific kind of thing, what I have found out from looking at a lot of ganseys is that there is a lot of diversity within the sphere of gansey, and while there might be a classic type, there is also a lot of variation. They have all sorts of stitches on, from cables to just knits and purls, and moss stitch. Yes, there are distinctive things that make a gansey different from other jumpers, but also there is a lot of regional variation, because they were worn all around the British Isles, around the coastal areas. They were the ubiquitous fisherman’s jumper, unofficial uniform, really

Liz: Mmm

Hazel: Everybody wore them, because they were so hard-wearing and warm

Liz: Yeah, the teaser image for this episode, if you look very closely, it’s hard ‘cause it’s not a great quality photo ‘cause it’s quite old

Hazel: Mm-hmm

Liz: But there are subtle differences in the jumpers than the men in the picture are wearing

Hazel: Mm-hmm. I have a fantastic picture, and I will put this up on the twitter, and it’s of a group of gentlemen from the early 1900s, presumably all fishermen, and they are, there’s about 10 of them, 10 or 12, and they’re all wearing ganseys, and most of them have got quite impressive facial hair

Liz: Well naturally

Hazel: They’re all wearing these berets, as well, apart from one guy in the middle who’s wearing a sort of bowler hat

(both laugh)

Hazel: It is fantastic, and they’re wearing these wonderful ganseys. Some of…if we go back to the beginning, traditionally, fishermen type jumper, so if you think, I dunno, what are famous fisherman-type characters. Captain Birdseye?

Liz: Captain Haddock

Hazel: Captain Haddock. So when you think of the classic Captain-whatever, smoking a pipe and wearing a knitted jumper, that’s probably what you’ll think of, that’s a gansey (laughs). So these, as I said, are very hard-wearing jumpers, and they originated some time in the 19th century as a widespread thing. They were probably wearing warm things, probably knitted things, before that, but during the 19th century, with the industrial revolution, you could now get special gansey wool, which was a 5-ply wool

Liz: That’s the aran wool that you get now, isn’t it, the not-quite-chunky but thicker than double knit

Hazel: It is also worsted spun, that’s a bit of a distinction I’ll go into, so apologies if anyone wasn’t expected detailed yarn structure talk on this podcast, but what were you expecting from me, reall?

Liz: (laughs)

Hazel: Worsted, today, refers to a weight, a thickness of wool, particularly in the US, but worsted, historically, refers to the way that the wool is spun. It’s been combed, so that all the fibres are aligned, and spun that way, rather than being carded and rolled into a rolag, and spun like that. That’s woollen spun. Woollen spun yarn is lovely and bouncy and airy, and worsted spun is quite dense

Liz: Ok interesting

Hazel: Yeah

Liz: Which makes it better for a fisherman’s jumper

Hazel: Yeah, dense, quite drapey usually. It’s a 5-ply worsed spun yarn, and that is gonna be quite strong as well, because the plys are the individual threads in your piece of yarn, that are all twisted together, and the more plys it has, the stronger it will be, so if you wear through one of the strands the others are still strong, like a rope. The hallmarks of a gansey, especially the traditional gansey, are this special yarn, this wool worsted spun 5-ply yarn, which apparently used to be known as seaman’s iron

Liz: Love it

Hazel: (laughs) Yep. They were usually knitted in a plain colour, very densely knitted, so all of the interest comes from the pattern, the texture of the pattern, rather than the colour. They would be textured either all over or just on the top

Liz: What do you mean by on the top?

Hazel: Sorry?

Liz: What do you mean by on the top?

Hazel: Some of them, the bottom, the part on your hips and your belly, would be plain, just plain knitting, and then the textured part would be on the top half, so the top of the sleeves, and the chest

Liz: Ok

Hazel: Yeah, so that was because that was the area that, if you were out working and you’re a fisherman, that part was more likely to get worn, so some people wouldn’t bother taking the extra time to knit the pattern on that part, because it would just get worn away, and then you’d reknit it, or patch it, or darn it

Liz: That’s smart

Hazel: Yeah it does make sense, and there are some of these ganseys in museums where you can see the collar, or parts of the sleeve, or the bottom rib band has been re-knitted, sometimes several years later, after it was made, or sometimes they’d get passed down to the next generation. These were objects, or garments, that could have a really long life, and were designed to have a really long life, and be able to be repaired, which makes a lot of sense

Liz: Yeah

Hazel: When you think about the kind of people who wore them, which I will talk about in a minute. The word gansey, it is kind of a regional name, it is more north of England and Scotland, I think. You may have also heard them called guernseys

Liz: Yeah, I think gansey is a corruption of Guernsey

Hazel: Yeah, ‘cause they are also worn in the Channel Isles, although apparently it’s a slightly different construction. It’s not thought that they originated in Guernsey, but because that’s a style of knitting that that island is also known for, that is a name that got attached to that kind of jumper, although there’s also a theory that, because it’s also similar to the Irish and Scottish Gaelic words for jumper

Liz: Oh interesting

Hazel: That is might be a generic word for jumper that then got passed over as a word for this fisherman’s jumper. It’s also similar to the German Garn, for yarn, so there’s all sorts of ideas on where the word came from, but it is also thought to be a corruption of Guernsey, so it’s one of those that, it just kind of happened and nobody’s really sure. As I said, these were often worn by fisherman. These are really hard working people who are usually not making a lot of money, and they would have needed these garments to keep them warm when they were out in the elements fishing, and would need something that was going to wear well and last a really long time, but, as we know, people like to make things look nice, and put patterns on things, and these ganseys are known for being quite intricately patterned, and there are patterns associated with different areas, but then also, people would move around, because they’re fishing, so they would be travelling round as well, and then also a big thing was the annual herring harvest, which would actually travel round the country as the season progressed. It would start up in the far north of Scotland, in the Hebrides, and then travel round the country towards Norfolk, so people would be moving around, and these designs do get transferred, and there’s some fun stories about this. So there definitely are designs that are associated with particular towns, if you look up the patterns for these you’ll see the Filey gansey, particular Scottish ganseys like Fife, also Cornish, Devon and Cornish patterns, and in Cornwall, apparently, they were known as knit frocks, which is quite sweet

Liz: That’s a very good word

Hazel: It is. So there are definitely Filey, Bridlington, trying to think of specific ones, but there are definitely patterns associated with a region. However, you might have heard the story that the patterns were so distinct that, if somebody drowned at sea, you would be able to identify them, and then take their body back to their home port, because you would be able to tell from the pattern on their jumper where they came from

Liz: I was just about to ask about that

Hazel: Yeah (laughs) that one there isn’t really any evidence for, both because, while there are regional patterns, you can find them in different places as well. They did get passed around, and people in different places came up with the same thing, and in a lot of these pictures of groups of people wearing ganseys, from the same place, they’re all wearing different ones, so it’s not like everyone..it’s not like they were super regional, everyone was only wearing a certain pattern. And secondly because, if someone was lost at sea, it’s unlikely that the body would be recovered anyway, unfortunately

Liz: True

Hazel: So those are the reasons that it’s not thought that that story is true. But, (laughing) there is a lovely story about people, because of course I haven’t talked yet about the people who were actually knitting these, which was very often the women in the family, although certainly men were knitting at the time as well, and sometimes these would be knitted by men, but more often it was the women of the family that would be doing it

Liz: Are you telling me that, historically, people didn’t always stick rigidly to gender roles?

Hazel: Yeah, funny, that. Turns out they didn’t

Liz: I’m horrified

Hazel: In fact, shock horror, gender roles can, in fact, change over time, and what we think today as rigid was not so in the past, but yeah, more on that later.

(both laugh)

Hazel: In fact, I say that, there are a lot of places in the world today where it’s considered culturally normal for men to knit, and has been so for centuries, so go figure, but actually that’s a future episode thing isn’t it, that we could do. Particularly in Scandinavia and South America there’s a big manly knitting culture

Liz: Yeah, I do wanna do episodes on knitting and on crochet in the future

Hazel: Yeah, that would be great. But, where was I? The people knitting these ganseys were more often the women, and there’s a story I heard that obviously they would be on the look-out for new patterns all the time, because if you’re knitting the same thing for a while it gets boring, and you’ve got a new member of the family, they don’t want a jumper that looks like everyone else’s, so you’re looking for new patterns. And, apparently, if there was a man in town who was wearing an unusual gansey, with never-before-seen patterns, you might see him being followed around by a crowd of women trying to work out the pattern as he walked around

Liz: That’s adorable!

Hazel: I know. And, in fact, in one of the most well-known books of gansey patterns, which is called “Guernseys, Jerseys, and Arans” I believe. I’m just gonna check that now, actually

Liz: You know, I never made the connection between Jersey the place and jersey the name for jumpers, but I guess it makes sense that it would be like Guernsey, just another name for the local jumpers

Hazel: Yeah, and actually we call knitted fabric jersey fabric now, like t-shirt fabric

Liz: Mmm

Hazel: So that one’s stuck around. But both areas were also quite well known for their knitting during the 18th and 19th century, especially their knitting of stockings. This book called  Patterns for Guernseys, Jerseys & Arans by Gladys Thompson, which came out quite a while ago, I think it came out maybe in the 60s, but this is one of the most well-known collections of gansey patterns, or of traditional jumper patterns, and she went around collecting these, around the British Isles

Liz: Well someone has to

Hazel: Exactly. Notes down a few anecdotes, and one of them is that she saw an old sailor-type wearing this beautiful gansey, and she immediately started covertly following him to try and figure out the pattern, and she got about halfway through before he went into a put

Liz: Oh no

Hazel: And this was mid-century Britain, women couldn’t go to pubs, so she wasn’t brave enough to follow him in, so she didn’t get all of that one

Liz: That’s beautiful

Hazel: I know. These ganseys were being knitted, and I’m using the word gansey, but it’s interchangeable with these other terms really, these could be knitted, these were knitted for members of the family, but if there was any spare time they could also be knitted for money, to sell to other fishermen or other people who knew the virtues of these jumpers, and these could…apparently some women were so good at knitting these that they could do it in the dark, just by the feel of the stitches, they could knit these patterns made of raised purls and knits, and even cables, just in the dark

Liz: That’s probably quite a useful skill without electric lighting

Hazel: Absolutely. And speaking of the herring trade, which at the time was a booming trade, very big, employed a lot of people, including thousands of herring girls, which you may have heard of

Liz: Rings a bell

Hazel: Yeah, there’s a folk song called The Herring Girl, I think. Can’t remember who it’s by. But these women were employed to gut the fish, because it had to be processed as soon as it was caught, for export around the world

Liz: Mm-hmm

Hazel: So they would be employed to, as soon as the fish came in, to gut it and prepare it for further processing, and they would have to work at a really really fast speed, and they would also travel around following the herring season, and they would take their knitting with them, and there are amazing pictures of all these herring girls, on their off-duty hours just doing some knitting, either for personal knitting or to make a bit of extra money on the side, and apparently in the south it wasn’t so common to see a lady knitting in public, whereas in Scotland and the north east that was just normal, so these herring girls would be strolling around knitting, and people were quite shocked

Liz: The idea of being shocked by that is wild

Hazel: (laughs)

Liz: It’s not private in any way

Hazel: I know, but I think also because of the style of knitting. In Scotland the use of knitting belts was quite popular. That’s where you have a little…I don’t know in other places, but I’ve seen Shetland knitters using these belts that are made of leather, and you tie them around the waist, and you prop one needle onto the belt, and then you can knit faster, if that makes sense

Liz: I think I can picture it

Hazel: Yeah

Liz: I might try and find a picture for the Twitter

Hazel: Yeah. And you can tie the rest of what you’re working on to the belt, so that it takes the weight off what you’re knitting, which, speaking of, I didn’t mention, but these ganseys were traditionally knitted, usually, in the round, on double pointed needles

Liz: Oh so you’ve got a full weight of it

Hazel: Yes, which is usually not what you think of for knitting jumpers. Today, people tend to use circular needles, or even, when we think about the heyday of knitting, in perhaps the 30s and 40s and 50s, when things were often knitted flat on two needles. But yeah, knitting things on double pointed needles, using 5 needles to knit a garment in the round we think of as quite a modern construction, but it’s actually very very historical, and a lot of especially underwear was being produced that way, especially from the late Middle Ages, but this method was still being used to create these ganseys on these long double pointed needles, and you can still get those as well. This is what I’m gonna attempt, I think. I’ll talk a little bit about that at the end

Liz: I have done jumpers in the round

Hazel: Mm-hmm

Liz: It’s fine until you get up to the armpit, and then you have to start splitting it

Hazel: Yeah, that can be a bit tricky. I think…I don’t really mind either construction. My first one was in the round, and that was fine, because it does go quite quickly, and I like not having to do too much sewing up, but there is quite a neat feeling about doing a flat construction and then sewing up, and it feeling like you’re tailoring, when you’re not really, you just knitted, but that’s quite fun. Speaking of, they would often have false seams, just one purl stitch running down the side of the jumper, which allows you to, because they weren’t using patterns, of course, these were all in the knitter’s head, so that allows you, when you’re knitting, to see where the side is, so when you want to make it bigger or smaller in a certain area you know you would do your increases or your decreases at the side, so it would look symmetrical, and that would show you how your, help you fit your pattern in. Say you know your pattern is over ten stitches, so I need to do this many repeats of the pattern so it’ll fit

Liz: I guess it also would serve the purpose of a marker at the start of the round

Hazel: Yeah

Liz: So you’d know when it’s starting to repeat again

Hazel: Yeah. It’s a false seam, but it’s not for decorative reasons, really. It’s for practical reasons, but I guess also decorative. And they would often have the initials of the person who was wearing it knitting into the gansey, using purl stitches to create the initials of the person, which is lovely

Liz: That’s really cute

Hazel: And sometimes the number of children they had as well. And these weren’t only worn by men. It was thought that they were just fishermen’s sweaters for a while, but there are some ganseys that have been discovered in multiple different colours. The traditional colour is navy blue, for a working gansey, although they have been found in other colours, because of course people were using the wool that they could get their hands on, and if that wasn’t navy blue and somebody needed a gansey, never mind, but the general traditional colour is navy blue, or possibly cream or off-white. People would sometimes have a working gansey and one for Sunday best, which I quite like as well, so some of the ones you see in the pictures might actually be people’s Sunday best, and they were the ones that were more likely to patterned all-over and be a lighter colour, because you’re gonna have less wear and tear on them. They kind of fell out of favour in the 20th century, as with many traditional crafts, although I’m pretty sure you can see the influence in a lot of commercial knitwear fashion, because people do like a nice cable jumper, or a nice pattern jumper, so in a way it’s good that that influence is still there, but, of course, they are definitely not as hard-wearing as a traditional gansey. These are a proper working jumper that is going to keep you warm, and even, they’re not waterproof, but they are gonna protect you from a bit of light water, because they’re very tightly knitted

Liz: Yeah, that thickness of proper wool is gonna go a lot

Hazel: Definitely. Although the actual gansey yarn is, I think it’s around a 4-ply, it’s not that thick, it’s just the gauge that it’s knitted at

Liz: Yeah, but once you start doing the cabling, the jumper gets thicker

Hazel: Oh yeah for sure, absolutely. I am gonna attempt one of these, hopefully this year. I’m gonna make one for Joe, my boyfriend, which is honestly a hell of a gift sweater. It’s a bit above and beyond

Liz: As long as you don’t awaken (creepy voice) the sweater curse!

Hazel: Oh my gosh no

(both laugh)

Hazel: But I think he’s gonna appreciate it, because I did say “do you want one of these” and he was like “yeah that sounds great”, and he has a lot of seaside connection, and he does go out walking a lot on the seafront, and he likes sailing and stuff, and just does a lot of outdoor things, so I think he will get good use out of it

Liz: Yeah

Hazel: And it will be worth making one. I do want to make one for myself, eventually

Liz: Do it, it’s so cosy

Hazel: Yeah, absolutely

Liz: Also, I should probably say what the sweater curse is, for the uninitiated

Hazel: Ok, go on

Liz: It’s basically the idea that if you start knitting a jumper for a significant other, especially a boyfriend, the relationship will end before you finish making the jumper, which, there’s probably a lot of confirmation bias and a lot of working very hard on a big thing that they maybe don’t appreciate is a big thing, and just the fact that they take forever

Hazel: Yeah, I’m a fairly slow knitter, so (laughs) I’m probably at risk of the sweater curse just by virtue of by the time I finish a sweater it will have been several years (laughs)

Liz: It is referenced in The Sims knitting pack, which is quite fun

Hazel: Is it really?

Liz: Yeah, there is a slight chance of, after making a jumper and then gifting it to another sim, it being really hard to do romantic interactions for a little bit

Hazel: But then, to be honest, I think there’s probably a high proportion of the opposite of the sweater curse, which is where you make your partner a jumper and they love it, and they love you for making them a whole jumper, and your relationship gets stronger

Liz: Oh yeah, it’s absolutely going to be a confirmation bias thing, but I find it really funny whenever someone says they’re making their significant other a jumper now

Hazel: (laughing) It is quite funny that if you say that someone’ll go “ooh are you sure?”, but it’s fine, if we break up I’ll just take it back

Liz: And then you’ll have one without having to make a second one

Hazel: Exactly, and we’re a similar size, so it’ll be fine, it will fit me

(both laugh)

Hazel: I’m gonna attempt this gansey. He said he wants it in a cream colour. I haven’t decided if I’m gonna do all over pattern or just on top, because he’s not going out at 3 in the morning and fishing up herring, so it’s probably not going to get that much wear and tear, but I do quite like the look where it’s just patterned across the top, so we’ll see. I’m gonna try and get ahold of this book, because when you look at patterns for ganseys, fully written patterns, there’s not that many. I suppose depending on where you look. But if you wanna go for quite a traditional style it can be quite difficult to find, and I want to try reproducing one of these regional patterns. These patterns, they have names, like Scottish flag, ropes and ladders, Betty Martin, marriage lines is quite a funny one. They have all these lovely names for the individual motifs in the pattern. The patterns on these jumpers are made up of all these individual kinds of pattern arranged in a different way, and obviously this was all done, traditionally, without a pattern, which is amazing, so these individual motifs would be passed from person to person, and then made into these unique combinations of pattern. It’s amazing, it’s beautiful. So I’m gonna try a bit of a reproduction, possibly trying to figure out several of these motifs and put them together into something, and see what happens, really. This probably isn’t going to happen very soon, because I do have a few things I need to finish first, but it’s something I wanna at least begin this year

Liz: (inaudible)

Hazel: Yeah (laughs). So I’ll try and…if anyone wants to do a bit of a knit along with me, let me know. We could run a podcast knit along, couldn’t we

Liz: That could be quite fun

Hazel: That could be quite fun (laughs) Ok, we’ll mull that over for a bit, and I’ll give it a go. And I’m gonna try out the double-pointed needles method, so we’ll see how far I get with that before I want to just break them all over my knee in a rage, and I feel like it’s gonna get quite heavy, because for an adult person they recommend using about a kilo of wool

Liz: Yeah, that’s how much the Knives Out jumper weighs

Hazel: That’s cosy, but it’s also quite heavy when you’re knitting it, I imagine?

Liz: Yep!

Hazel: (laughs)

Liz: I was doing it on circular needles

Hazel: Yeah

Liz: The filament bit came out of the needle

Hazel: Oh my goodness

Liz: It was too heavy for my circulars

Hazel: (laughs) Wow. I’m gonna end this section, actually, on the note of a picture that I will put up on the twitter. This picture is of a statue that stands in the harbour at the port of Bridlignton, in the UK, and this statue is called The Gansey Girl, and it is of a woman sitting down and knitting a gansey, and it’s beautiful, and I had no idea that this was actually memorialised in a statue until I had a bit of a look around getting ready for this episode, and I found this, and I really love it. I love that it’s such a beloved thing that they have a statue to it in this place, so I will be posting that to the Twitter, and please do go and have a look, and that is a short and sweet history of the gansey, and maybe you’re inspired to give it a go, or maybe you really want one now, and you’re gonna grab the knitter in your life and plead them to make one, in which case, good luck

Liz: Before we move on to local larder, I do just wanna say we have a wordpress now, which we will hopefully be posting to weekly on a Thursday, the first post is on cottage pie etc

Hazel: Et cetera?

Liz: Cottage pie, shepherd’s pie, fish pie, cumberland pie

Hazel: Oh yeah

Liz: There’s a lot of things of the same genre

Hazel: (laughs) Genre of pie, I like it, ok

Liz: There’s also shepherdess pie, I think, which is a vegan version

Hazel: Oh really? That’s fun

Liz: Cumberland pie, which was my sister’s favourite growing up

Hazel: Does that have sausages in it?

Liz: It’s half beef half pork, I believe

Hazel: Oh right, ok. Hmm

Liz: Or half beef half lamb. I don’t remember off hand, but it’s a mixed meat

Hazel: (laughs) Everybody’s favourite

Liz: Local larder, I thought, this is gonna get a little gross after all of the wholesome jumpers, ‘cause I thought I would talk about illegal Sardinian cheese

Hazel: Illegal cheese

Liz: Illegal cheese. There’s a couple of cheese that are produced in Sardinia which have kind of gross, kind of unhygienic traditional production methods, which mean that they are illegal to produce, even though they are still produced by the ton in Sardinia

Hazel: Ok (laughs)

Liz: The first one I wanna talk about, ‘cause there’s less to say, is su callu, which is…you know normally cheese is curdled with rennet, which comes from the stomach

Hazel: Yes, of the calf, right?

Liz: This is made by killing a suckling goat and letting the milk in its stomach react with the rennet in its stomach, and then that turns into that cheese

Hazel: Oh. Ok…ok

Liz: Which people apparently sell out of their trunks, out of the boots of their cars, because it’s illegal

Hazel: Bootleg illegal goat stomach cheese

Liz: Yeah

Hazel: Not…hmm…have to say, I’m not gonna be the first in line to try that

Liz: I’m kind of terrible in that I would try it

Hazel: (laughs)

Liz: What I wouldn’t try is the other illegal Sicilian cheese, which you may have heard of

Hazel: Is this the one with the worms in it?

Liz: It’s not worms

Hazel: (discomfort noises)

Liz: It’s worse

Hazel: No

Liz: It’s called casu marzu

Hazel: Right

Liz: Which is normally a pecorino, which is a nice nutty sheep’s milk cheese

Hazel: I like a pecorino

Liz: Yeah

Hazel: So far so good

Liz: In which the cheese fly has been allowed to lay its eggs and the maggots to live in the cheese. I’m not normally squeamish about the concept of eating bugs, I have eaten bugs before

Hazel: Uh-huh

Liz: Not in a child picking bugs up off the ground way, in a prepared for food kind of way, but the maggots are traditionally still alive when you eat the cheese

Hazel: (squeals)

Liz: Which is a problem, because they produce some delicious sounding chemicals

Hazel: Oh!

Liz: In the cheese, including cadaverine

Hazel: Ok that can’t be good

Liz: And putrescine

Hazel: No! This is so much worse than I

Liz: Which sounds so delicious

Hazel: This is so much worse than I thought it was, and I thought it was pretty bad

Liz: Apparently it is sold on the black market, an estimated 100 metric tonnes a year, for twice the price of regular pecorino

Hazel: Eurgh

Liz: Because, again, this is an illegal cheese. There are cheese smugglers out there

Hazel: (disgusted noise) No!

Liz: It’s traditionally served in thin strips on a Sardinian flatbread, served with some strong red wine

Hazel: You’re gonna need some strong drink with that

Liz: Mmm. Apparently sometimes when you disturb the maggots, they just up at you

Hazel: Oh no!

Liz: So you traditionally eat it with your hand help over it

Hazel: Made it worse

Liz: And sometimes the maggots survive in your stomach

Hazel: No!

Liz: And cause myiasis which, you may have heard of fly strike

Hazel: Oh, ok, I feel a little bit sick now

Liz: I figured we needed to cover it at some point

Hazel: Did we though?

Liz: Interestingly though, the University of Sassari, in Italy, worked with sheep farmers in 2005 to produce a more hygienic way of making the cheese

Hazel: Ok

Liz: I’m not sure how hygienic it can be when you’re encouraging flies to lay their eggs in it, but there’s a huge campaign, which this was a part of, to try and legalise casu marzu, I don’t think it’s going well

Hazel: I suppose that goes to show if you make it illegal people will just flipping buy it because it’s illegal, and ha ha ha illegal cheese

Liz: Yeah, there are several other kinds of cheese with insects in, mostly from Italy

Hazel: Ok

Liz: But there’s also a German cheese, and a French one called mimolette, which uses cheese mites as part of the ageing process

Hazel: Ok. I love that Italy is known for some of the greatest food in the world, and also this

Liz: And also this

Hazel: (laughs)

Liz: That is…I just wanted to talk about illegal Sardinian cheeses

Hazel: Ok, can we now not ever talk about them again, please?

Liz: I promise to never mention them to you again

Hazel: Thank you

Liz: If you want to contact us, you can email breadandthreadpodcast @ gmail.com. Feel free to complain about bringing up the concept of casu marzu, but it needed bringing up

Hazel: (laughs) We need to talk about it. No, no we don’t. Don’t send me emails about the cheese

Liz: You say that like you’re the one that checks the inbox

Hazel: (laughs) That is true, but that’s your cross to bear, because you’re the one who brought up the cheese

(both laugh)

Hazel: (tune of We Don’t Talk About Bruno) We don’t talk about casu marzu. Anyway. We also have a twitter, where you can see pictures that are absolutely not going to be of this cheese, because I will not let Liz do that

Liz: Promise

Hazel: No. You can see pictures of things that we talk about on the show, you can see teasers for upcoming episodes, and whatever we decide we want to talk about

Liz: Yeah, we’re doing WIP Wednesdays now

Hazel: Yes. It is good

Liz: Which is Work In Progress Wednesdays

Hazel: We have a youtube, as all the kids do, where you can find audio versions of our podcast. Wait. Audio versions of our podcast? Youtube versions of our podcast, which is already audio

Liz: Yeah, they are audio only, but they’re on youtube if you prefer to get your podcasts that way. We’re also on tumblr, reblogging various food, craft, aren’t humans great type content. That’s bread and thread, as are the twitter and youtube, we believe in strong branding. We’re also on patreon, patreon.com/breadandthread, you can get access to patreon exclusive discord server, we just hang out and have a nice time, as well as patron exclusive recipes, which I post every month. Believe the last one was sticky toffee pudding. An incredibly decadent sticky toffee pudding with two different toffee sauces

Hazel: So fancy. So we have any other fo the social media TM?

Liz: Just the wordpress, which I already mentioned. Breadandthread.wordpress.com

Hazel: We are bloggeurs

Liz: We’re everywhere

Hazel: (laughs)

Liz: Except for tiktok, because I don’t like it

Hazel: Yeah, not a fan. Although I will watch tiktoks reposted to pretty much any other social media, so what does that say

Liz: The ones that break containment

Hazel: (laughs) The true, the actual cycle of the internet. The ones that are good enough will circulate again and again and again

Liz: Yep. Until you’re sick of seeing them

Hazel: And then 10 years later

Liz: So yeah, thank you for listening, and we will be back in a couple of weeks