Ganseys

It's lovely when a book is stewing on the back of the stove, so long you almost forget the details and then one morning, something catches your eye, a vital ingredient that would never have been included if you'd eaten the soup the first day. Dutch ganseys, for instance. Traditional knitted fisherman's sweaters. Patterns passed down by oral tradition. Intriguing.

My heroine is the daughter of a Dutch fisherman, in a home where knitting is forbidden, and painful to mention, because of her mother's nightmarish past. The story is my own pattern, flowing from the old fairy tale about the swan brothers, and the sister who must free them; I hope to blend elements of Mrs. Rochester, locked away in her attic; that Meldrum novel, Madapple, which I never read but the cover and premise appealed to me; the can't-put-your-finger-on-it deliciousness of We Have Always Lived in the Castle... this is sounding like quite the gothic novel, but that's not my goal. Anyway, knitting plays a big, big part in the plot, and now to discover this element of ganseys, well. I'm pleased.

(Does this mean I'm writing again? Well, I'm thinking about it... :)