This pillow cover uses a selection of stitch patterns from a gansey worn by a girl known as Jess. She lived on the Orkney island of Stronsay in the early part of the twentieth century and from May to July worked the “herring season” on the island as a gutter, removing the guts from the herring and packing them in barrels of salt. Her gansey is unusual in that the pattern is not symmetrical, but every panel has a different stitch pattern. Some of these patterns were ones used down the east coasts of Scotland and England, while others seem to be specific to Orkney. I think of pillows as blank canvasses! Feel free to do as an Orcadian knitter would do and change the panels to suit yourself. The front of the pillow can be worked using the chart for the back, and the back can be worked using the chart for the front. And if you don’t need a pillow, two or three of the panels with a 5-stitch garter or seed-stitch border makes a great scarf.