Fana Headband

My headband has been knit for a while now, I wanted to finish it before I posted, but I can't decide if I want to line it or?? I think I'll wait until I get my trim so I'll have a trial run sewing it on before I finish the sweater.


Sorry this photo is so bizarre, I didn't make a non-rolling edge because I knew I was going to be sewing the edges under, so I had to pin it to a hat.

The good news is my tension was fairly good, no puckering or huge loose floats. So now I have my gauge and the dimensions of a sweater whose fit I like. Time to get to a little figurin' so I can order the rest of my yarn.

In other news, I contacted Annemor Sundbø to get permission to post a photo of a Fana sweater from her book "Everyday Knitting: Treasures From a Ragpile". (It will be on my blog, but right now I am being tortured by Blogger, who hates me and my mac, and makes posting photos an often impossible endeavor.) I found out that she had a few copies left of a book about Fana sweaters that I had been trying to find in the U.S., which I ordered, and she is helping me with the trim.

Edited to add: here is the post with the photo

Buckling down to the task

I completed a couple of test knits Friday night so I was able to return to the KAL. Before applying needles to yarn I needed to make sure I had my pattern ready to go. I double checked my measurements, calculated my sections, plotted my final charts and took a deep breath.

Provisionally cast on 406.

I'm a big gal and pear shaped. Twelve inches is the difference between my bust and hips. If I did a straight line box knit I would either have a sweater that fits fine around the bust and stretches over my tuchus like a sausage skin, or a nicely draping hemline with bunches of fabric to swim in at my shoulders. The wedge in the sides that will turn the the box into an A line shape. With my gauge at 7 stitches to the inch, it meant that I had 84 stitches more to start with than what will end at the underarm. Mama.

Not my swatch

If I was going to make my sweater in a worsted-weight yarn then this could be my swatch. My kids were most impressed with the book and the stitch patterns and asked me to knit them something. My son was particularly taken with the llama, so a llama hat it is! I'm still working on my daughter's (she wanted snowflakes).






The blue, green and white yarn is Knitpicks' Wool of the Andes, the gold is Elann's Peruvian Highland Wool. Colours and design chosen by my son Aran.

I'm quite happy with how the hat turned out and I might make Aran a llama sweater (once my sweater is done!), so this may end up being a swatch after all.

No headband but graphs galore

Hey ho, gang!

I haven't had the time lately to work on the headband and probably won't until later. I did do some preliminary swatching to check to see if my gauge had changed from when I did the Sirdal and nothing has changed, so I'm confident in my gauge calculations.

In the meantime, I've been doing designs for the sweater and taking all sorts of inspiration from Latvian, Estonian, and Scandinavian designs. The center panel will have the lily flowers separated with lozenges that contain images from my life. The lower panel will contain more traditional figures. Between the panels I'm thinking of doing a latticework similar to this.

The sweater will have a front half opening with a lozenge being the placket for the zipper. When I have a spare moment between jobs (the day one and the knitting ones), I'll sit down and work out the main charts for the lovely thing. The motif bands will be white on black with the lattice white on black. Cuffs and bottom edge will be hemmed. And as I'm pear shaped, the sides will have a wedge motif to disguise the shaping.

And they say I'm crazy. Muwhahahahahaha!!

Swatch: headband done!

Here's the swatch of one of my patterns .... it's Dale of Norway's Heilo in a dark-olive green and cream. I'm also going to do the highlight contrast as a dark, charcoal grey ....

BTW, my 16yod loves this headband and has already "schneebed" it for her use.

Headband/Swatch Complete

Hi, All. I got some free time this last week, so I was able to get the swatch done. I'm pretty happy with the colors and yarn.

I'm getting 5.5 stitches to the inch with size US3 needles. I'm using Jaggerspun 8/3 wool yarn. It's going to be a long knit, that's for sure, since I'm kind of wide and tall. I'm going to knit the crew neck version but also making it a cardigan, so I'll be steeking the front, too. I've never steeked, so this is going to be a challenge. I love a good challenge. I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone else is doing.

Time to move on to Headband...

Yarn and Color:
After making several swatches, I finally came to a decision what yarn and color to use for my sweater. I got an idea from most unlikely place, Glamour magazine (I don't even read the magazine! But somehow, I brought it back from a flight I took this summer to Canada). I believe the colors are not for a traditional Norwegian sweater. But I really like the looks on white base, light grey, purple and navy combination. I also like the bulky feeling and texture with this color. So I am going to use worsted weight. The orange swatch is done with sports weight yarn I had (Nature Spun sports weight, US3) Others are with worsted weight (2 of them Nature Spun, 1 of them Elann.com Highland wool, US6). Motifs are from 1000 Great Knitting Motifs by Luise Roberts.

Idea and Style:
I have spent quite some time looking at different sources for ideas for this sweather. Dale of Norway, any knitting magazines, yarn catalogues and anything on internet. It is overwhelming to see so many beautiful sweaters out there! Since I am going with non-traditional yarn, I thought I wanted to keep my style traditional. But I came across with this really cute sweater on Rebecca no. 34 August-October issue and fall in love with it (this one also has a nice color contrasting work. The motif on shoulder and lower body are done in opposite colors). So I am going to be a rebel and add a hood to the sweater. So at this point, only hope I have it to pick a traditional motif to make this a Norwegian sweater! Now I am working on a headband.