Fafner Blanket

Recipient: Baby Whyte (originally for DH's cousin)
Designer: Elsebeth Lavold
Pattern: Fafner
Source: Viking Patterns for Knitting
Completed: July 15, 2006 (baby due August 9, 2006)
Colours: Cream, and maybe turquoise or purple
Yarn: Red Heart 100% acrylic, heavy worsted weight
Completed status: Given July 20, 2006
Pictures:

completed


'artistic' shot


'in action' shot

2006-Jul-26

They loved it.

And there really is such a difference between someone saying a happy thank you and someone saying a really grateful, heartfelt thank you. Of course, both are nice, but the latter is golden.

The mum-to-be - a terrifically driven individual - had the thank-you card delivered into my hands about two workdays later. It sez:

Thank you again for the beautiful hand-knit blanket! You must have spent a lot of time making it for us - it is truly appreciated! I'm sure it will get a lot of use.

I am very, very happy about the whole thing. As far as I'm concerned, the baby should now feel free to show up at any time. :)

2006-Jul-18

Firstly, thank you so much to all the nice people who complimented and congratulated me on finishing this project.

I unwrapped it, labelled it, re-wrapped it, and brought it to work. It is now hiding in my filing cabinet until the shower party. However, before I re-wrapped it, my daughter insisted on snuggling with it. So I had to take an 'in action' picture.

(Damn, I should have written 'kid-tested and approved' on the label, too.)

2006-Jul-16

Done! Ends have been woven in and blocking has been done. I'm very pleased. It's all wrapped and ready to go to work on Monday...except that I haven't labelled it yet. Whoops. I'll do that before I hand it off.

2006-Jul-14

I'm helping to plan the baby-celebrating party for my co-worker. (It is not a shower...I've had it impressed upon me by enough guys that one does not throw a 'shower' for a man. Even if it looks like a shower, sounds like a shower and acts like a shower, it is not a shower if we do not actually call it a shower. I hope we're all clear on this point.) Therefore, I know exactly when it is going to be: SOON. Like, next week. (If he reads this blog I am screwed, because it's supposed to be a surprise.) The realisation that I needed to finish this blanket immediately kinda hit me like a truck, and so I've been doing the destable tasks of sewing it together and weaving in the ends for the last few nights. I am almost done - just a few more ends to weave in, some gaps to fill in at the corners, and then a quick block to smooth it out a bit. But even now I think it looks pretty darn good:


The only problem (discovered way too late to do anything about it) is that it totally does not match with the white, red, navy and light blue 'antique sailboat' theme of the planned nursery. Oh, well.

2006-Mar-12

This weekend the plan got put into action. I took note of how many rows were in the body of the blanket (146). I put all the stitches for the body on the row above where I was going to cut onto a needle. I then cut the intended row, leaving me with two pieces of blanket. I ripped back the bottom half to below the turquoise cable motif and put the stitches on a needle. I attached the new-found turquoise yarn to the edging and attempted to finish it.

I HAD ENOUGH TURQUOISE.

Barely. This is how much was left over:


Whew.

Then I grafted the cast-on and cast-off edges of the edging together. I counted how many rows were on the top section of the blanket (61) and calculated that I therefore needed to have 84 rows done on the bottom section of the blanket before I could start grafting the two pieces of body back together (61 + 84 + 1 grafting row = 146). I knit on the bottom section until I had 84 rows. I grafted the top and bottom together.

Unbelievable. It's all coming together. Literally - I've started to sew the body to the edging:


Not bad, eh?

2006-Mar-11

Briefly did some work on this in the last few days. Last night I ran out of the ball of turquoise one pattern repeat short.

I'm not done yet. My plan is to cannibalize the turquoise cable motif in the middle of the blanket. I don't mind doing this because I don't actually like the way the dragon head looks - it's too big, it makes the cables look like they've got a weird, huge lump on top of them. Rather than rip out over half of the body of the blanket and re-knit it exclusively in the cream, I'm going to instead cut the blanket body right above the cable motif, put the top on needles to prevent unravelling, frog down to the beginning of the cable motif, save the turquoise, knit the body back up in cream to where the cable motif used to end, and then graft the top back on. (Hopefully that description made some sense.)

The big question is, is there enough turquoise in the cable motif to do one pattern repeat on the edging?

Your guess is as good as mine. Sigh.

2006-Feb-18

I did a few rows on this Thursday night. No big whoop. The turquoise yarn continues to die a fast death.

2006-Feb-13

Moved forward ever-so-slightly on the edging this weekend but still not enough to know for sure if I'm going to have enough turquoise yarn. I still suspect not.

2006-Jan-9

I think I've given up on the idea of giving this to DH's cousin. This gives me extreme guilt, but then I think of how they live far away; we rarely see them; they've already received knitted love from me for their last baby (okay, that point kind of enhances my guilt because I feel I must follow up on the precedent); the child has already been born (gender and name unknown); they don't know I was thinking of making them anything; the project is driving me around the bend; I'm trying to scale back on all the knitting...you know. Good reasons. (Back me up here.)

The new plan is to wait a while and then see if I can salvage it for an expectant parent of my acquaintance. (Yes, I have a specific person in mind. However, this news is not yet fully 'out' so I shall keep mum on their identity for the moment.)

2006-Jan-3

Friday being the last day before New Year's, we were let go early from work. So I came home and worked on this in an effort to find out ASAP whether or not I was going to run out of turquoise yarn. I knitted and knitted and knitted and am now only about ten pattern repeats from finishing:


Sadly, it don't look good for the turquoise yarn:

(my foot included for scale)

The nice thing is that I have a good chance of finding more of this stuff at Zellers. However, since I started using the turquoise yarn specifically to get it the heck out of my stash, I despise the idea of buying any more. In fact, I am so not into buying more that I think I would be willing to cannibalise the turquoise dragon cables (thereby necessitating a re-knit of most of the centre portion of the blanket) in order to salvage more turquoise yarn for the edging.

The kicker is that even though it looks bad, turquoise-wise, I still don't know for sure, and the miles of edging were starting to suck out my soul, so I gave up for a little while.

Stay tuned for the continuing drama.

2005-Dec-18

27 pattern repeats to go. Yes, that's right. One lousy pattern repeat since last I posted. I suck.

2005-Dec-15

I've decided to do a countdown. Hopefully this will make me feel better about things. 28 pattern repeats to go.

2005-Dec-13

Third corner is complete and I have begun the third edge.


This may sound like good news...it is not. I have looked at the remaining turquoise yarn and am once again cursing myself because I'm not sure if there will be enough to do the whole edging. (I have been too scared to weigh the thing to find out for sure.) I am a right royal idiot, is what it is. I should have done the cables in the turquoise and the background in the cream. Sigh.

2005-Dec-11

The second side is finished and I am turning the third corner. I may yet finish this in my lifetime.

2005-Dec-6

Snails move faster:

2005-Dec-5

This project is the bane of my existence. The ball and chain on my ankle. The monkey on my back. The Dementor at my Quidditch game. I swear, I keep knitting and knitting and knitting the edging on this damn thing, and...nothing. I only just finished the first side this weekend. It SUCKS. The Schedule is weeping - it has been thrown completely off by this one damn project, and there doesn't seem to be any hope of redemption. By this point I'm supposed to have finished this blanket, a fair isle hat and mitts, and gotten the second sock of DH's Christmas present started. But no...I'm still working on the damn edging. Sob.

2005-Nov-23

The edging has crawled forward by only a few inches. Sad.

2005-Nov-21

This is kind of becoming The Project That Ate My Soul. I keep rejigging The Schedule to make it possible to finish this sucker, and every week it continues to kick my @$$ and not meet my imposed deadlines. Last week's goal was to finish the edging and sew it to the main body. As I posted on the weekend, as of early Sunday this was not remotely accomplished. However, I had hoped that a drive to and from Barrie for a birthday party would start putting me ahead.

No dice.

I haven't measured yet, but I suspect from eyeballing it that I've only managed to knit up one lousy foot across one lousy side.

Stupid blanket. I wish this gestating baby's mother no ill will at all, but I'm really starting to hope in earnest that it stays in there for a while yet.

2005-Nov-20

This isn't going so well. My goal is to finish the entire edging and possibly the sewing of the edging to the main section of the blanket by the end of today. Instead, I have this:


Sad.

2005-Nov-16

Last night I began the edging. As mentioned before, this is my first time knitting around corners and I was really looking forward to it. I was not disappointed. Kelly, it does indeed use short rows and very clever they are, too. The pattern calls for casting on 28 stitches and working the repeating cable pattern until you want to start a corner. I wanted to start the corner right away, so not much of the cable pattern got done before the turning point. :) The first row of the (left-turning) corner has you work 26 stitches in the pattern (RS), turn, and go back on the WS. The third row of the corner has you work 24 stitches in the pattern, turn, and go back on the WS. You continue to follow the pattern, working two fewer stitches on every RS row, until you hit the point where you work 2 stitches on the RS, turn, and go back on the WS. At this point, my work looked like this:


Then, the pattern has you work across 4 sts on the RS, turn, and go back on the WS. Next, you work across 6 stitches on the RS, turn, and go back on the WS. And so on, continuing to follow the pattern. I haven't quite finished going around the corner, but you will still get an excellent idea of how it works by looking at what I've done so far:


There are only two problems. Firstly, my cables on the edging so far are pretty wonky and some of the stitches are embarrassingly uneven. That's actually weird, I'm not sure why that happened. Usually my cables look quite nice.

The second problem is that the edging is only about 5" wide, which is going to give me a finished blanket of three feet square. I was kind of hoping for something a little larger, even just a few inches longer on each dimension. So (depending on how much cream I have left, and I suspect I will have quite a bit), I may do a second edging once I've sewn everything together. I'm not thinking of doing anything fancy - simple garter stitch is actually what I have in mind, and done by picking up stitches around the outside of the blanket so I don't have to do any more sewing. But we'll see how it goes.

2005-Nov-13

The centre panel is complete, including the dragon's head on the cabling (although I still have to sew that in place):

It actually is a square piece, you just can't tell because of all the curling at the sides.

Next up: the edging. This is going to be very interesting because it will use the technique of knitting around corners, which I haven't done yet. But I understand it's just a variation on short rows, so I don't think it will be tough.

2005-Nov-10

This is stalled, although I did get a few rows done the other night. I expect to be able to forge ahead this weekend.

2005-Nov-7

Yesterday I went on a hunt for every scrap of the cream yarn I'm using for this project. This was a tricky task, because the original one-pound ball I bought has been sliced up into numerous smaller balls (used in two aborted attempts at making an afghan for our bedroom). So there's a lot of it in bits and pieces around the house. Once I had gathered up all the balls I could, I got DH's digital scale and started weighing what I had, including the in-progress blanket. Total: about 350g. This is interesting, since the original ball was supposed to weigh 454g. So, somewhere I've lost 100g of cream-coloured acrylic worsted, and I have no idea where. I don't think I've used it in a project. I don't think I've given it away. It must just be hiding somewhere.

Unfortunately, based on how much the work-in-progress weighed at this point vs. how much work I'd done on it, I calculated that I will need about 430g for the whole blanket. So I was unwilling to keep going with only the cream in the hopes that the missing 100g would magically show up in the next two weeks. I therefore decided to conserve the cream yarn by doing the dragon cables and part of the border in a turquoise acrylic worsted which I think goes very well with the cream. Thus:

I'm not sure why the cables look so wonky in this picture but they look better in person, honest. For the border (which also has cables), the turquoise will be the background and the cables will be in the cream. I think it'll look really nice.

Hopefully this plan of action will conserve the cream yarn enough to let me finish the whole blanket. The agony of this plan is that I won't know for sure until the blanket is mostly done.

2005-Nov-4

I worked some more on this last night, and I'm about halfway to starting the dragon cable motif in the middle.


Sure, it doesn't look like much now, but wait until you see the dragon cable. :)

2005-Oct-28

I went hunting Wednesday night through Elsebeth Lavold's Viking Patterns for Knitting and rediscovered a pattern for a cushion cover called Fafner. The completed cushion cover is only 15-16" square, but that's with a gauge of 20 sts/4" on 4mm needles. I, on the other hand, am using a heavier worsted weight from my wanna-make-something-with-it-and-get-it-the-heck-outta-here stash (Red Heart Comfort in a cream colour), on 5mm needles. Plus, I'm doubling the height and width of the centre section. With any luck, this will result in at least a 3-foot square blanket. And if not, I'll just add another layer of edging.

Work started last night - I cast on 100 stitches for the centre section and did a few rows of plain reverse stocking stitch.

The only drawback is that I might not have enough of the cream to do the whole blanket. So I'm thinking of doing all the cabling work in some turquoise (or maybe purple) heavy worsted to conserve the cream. We shall see - I have some time to figure this out since I don't get to the first of the cables until 40 rows into the centre section.

But notice the intelligent decision-making skills? How the knitter, already desperately pressed for time, chooses a project with big gauge to produce maximum results in minimum time? Look at me...I'm learning.

2005-Oct-26

It is with a sick heart that I admit here on this blog that I am probably not going to make this in time for the baby's birth. Heck...with all the projects I have planned, I'm not even sure I'll make this in time for the baby's first birthday!

The problem is that the lace is just not as nice as I want it to be. I know, I know, lace always looks like nasty noodles until you block it. I don't think that is my problem. The problem is that I used the wrong lace pattern to punch out the shawl's design motif, and it just looks weird, even when I stretch it out to see what it would look like post-blocking. I think I know what the right design should be, but even then I'm not sure it would look that good.

The problem is that the motif is not one which uses nice, 45-degree angled lines, thus creating a nice smooth edge along the outline of the shapes - which, from all the lace stuff I've looked at and the designs I've come up with that ended up looking like crap, appears to be necessary when working images in lace. So I'm either going to have to: a) do more lace research to come up with a way to do the motif which will actually look good; b) rework the motif so that it has 45-degree angled lines; or c) come up with a totally new motif which does have 45-degree angled lines. Any way you slice it, I have to frog everything I've done so far, redesign my chart, and give up the idea that this will be done before the baby comes.

I care not.

Okay, I do care...but not enough to let it stop me from producing the shawl the way I want it to look. I have a vision, dammit. Woe betide anyone who gets in the way of that.

So instead, this particular baby will be getting something else. I think I'm going to cobble together some celtic-looking cables (possibly of my own creation, possibly lifted from some of Elsbeth Lavold's Viking stuff), and do up a blanket instead. Fast.

2005-Sep-1

Got another row done on the commute this morning. What with all the increasing, it's getting harder and harder to finish one row in a decent amount of time. But I'm over a quarter done the shawl (pre-edging), so it's not like I'm not making progress. It just seems like I'm not making progress.

2005-Aug-25

I've been taking this to work with me most days this week, and some progress is happening. I am, however, only 23% done.

2005-Aug-15

I've transferred the work onto my longest 4mm circular, which means I am better able to see how the pattern is coming along. Let us say that I am both pleased and displeased. The pattern idea certainly is working, but on the other hand, my lacework is wonky enough that I am relying very heavily on that knitting thing which says that the true magic of lace is in the blocking. (Please, oh please.)

Oh, also, The Schedule says that I'm supposed to finish this week.

Go on, feel free to laugh. It's certainly the funniest thing I've heard in a while.

2005-Aug-12

Flushed with the success of having begun the armscye division on the Stornaway sweater, I decided to take this project to work this morning instead. I've done a few rows so far today, and hope to surge ahead even more by the time I go to bed. I'm getting a tiny bit more confident that I won't run out of yarn. I've got three cones in all, and it doesn't look like I've used up even half of the first cone, yet I've completed over one-sixth of the project. On the other hand, I don't know for sure whether all three cones have the same amount of yarn on them, so I might still be screwed. Plus, my visual assessment of how much of the cone I've used up could be for crap. And I'm too chicken to break out the postage scale to see for sure whether or not I'm doomed. Stay tuned for the continuing drama.

2005-Aug-11

Apparently I cannot do basic math. In my last entry, I wrote that I had about 150 rows left before the edging. This was incorrect. The real number was actually closer to 130. And after last night's knitting, the number is 125.

Of course, this is all a moot point because I don't know what the heck I'm going to do for the edging anyway...

2005-Aug-9

Progress is crawling forward. I've got about 150 (ever-increasing) rows left before starting the edging, and only two weeks (according to The Schedule) to do them. Ha! Despair is starting to set in.

2005-Aug-4

Work proceeds. I got a few more rows done last night while watching the travesty that was the Canadian Idol results show. (I am still staggered and incensed that Casey has not once appeared in the bottom three. Clearly people are not voting based on performing competence. But I digress.)

I tried this morning to take a picture which shows off the nice shimmery-ness of the silver yarn, but without giving away what the piece looks like (since I will be trying to publish the pattern). This was the best I could do:

Oh, well. Trust me - in person, it's sparkly.

2005-Aug-2

Over the weekend, it hit me that this project has moved my penchant for difficult knitting from the realm of 'merely amusing' into 'downright disturbing'. I think the moment this all came home to me was when I realised that the last row on this ever-expanding shawl was going to have over 1,200 stitches in it.

Yeah, you read that right. Twelve. Hundred. Stitches.

Why am I creating this design in the hopes of publishing it if no one but myself is stupid enough to actually want to knit it? Ah, a question for the ages. Nevertheless, the work continues.

I went shopping at my local Zellers this weekend in search of the yarn for this project (among other things) and came up completely empty-handed because the craft section there SUCKED ROCKS. I am so annoyed. They had just two (count 'em, two) balls of sock yarn left and a paltry selection of fingering weight yarn (two colours - one of which was, heaven help me, green). I left the store yarnless and went home to rummage desperately through my stash, which is notoriously bereft of lightweight yarn.

However, I came across the laceweight yarn I'm using for my Catherine Howard sweater. It's a 70% wool/30% rayon blend, is definitely soft enough to use for baby stuff, and I have it in three colours - blue, silver and gold (and I do mean silver and gold, not just grey and yellow, because the rayon component has nifty sparkly bits). Now, I will need most of the blue for the sweater, so I couldn't use that, but I really liked the idea of using the silver or gold. By this point, however, I had realised just how freaking huge the project was, and was nervous that I would run out, so I chose the silver, because I have more of that than the gold (and I'm still nervous about running out).

After several false starts (I hate knitting in the round starting out with a small number of stitches and having to do yarnovers between DPNs), I finally got it going and have done about 60 rows so far. Given that there will probably be about 210 rows by the time it's all finished, 60 rows sounds like I've made tremendous progress, right? Nope, because the pattern adds 12 stitches to every other row. So I'm not actually over 25% done. Rather, I'm around the 9% mark. Odds of finishing this in three weeks? Slim. Especially since I never actually completed a whole test pattern before starting the real shawl (yes, dumbass, I know) so I don't even know if the pattern will look good. I'm working on faith - I guess I like to live on the edge. Stay tuned - things will probably get real dramatic, real fast.

2005-Jul-29

In an attempt to stop the fruitless attempts at designing a decent-looking pattern, I made a template of how the motif should look, in pen, and then attempted to put a lace design within that template, in pencil. This was a good decision. I'm now testing the latest stab at the design, which has the motif worked completely in lace, surrounded by solid stocking stitch. So far it is looking very hopeful, although admittedly I'm only about eight rows into it. I'm crossing my fingers that the pattern will emerge properly as I keep going.

2005-Jul-26

I still have a few tricks up my sleeve. These include:

poring through any lace knitting books I can find at my local library for help on how to render complex shapes in lace

having the pattern I want be worked completely in lace eyelets instead of merely being outlined in lace eyelets

having the pattern I want be worked in solid stocking stitch on a lace background, instead of working the pattern in lace on a stocking stitch background

designing a romper for this baby and saving the lacy shawl idea for someone else

Stay tuned. Any help you want to offer would be tremendously appreciated.

2005-Jul-25

I'm continuing on the test pattern. Not only is it taking forever, but I'm getting increasingly depressed that the lace is not looking the way I want. I am beginning to come to the conclusion that I just don't have enough experience knitting lace yet to really know how to do what I want to do. Moreover, I've been hunting on the Internet for some references, and all the books which look like they would help me figure out my problems are so obscure that they are not available from my local libraries or from any major online booksellers. AUGH!!! Clearly this is going to take longer than I thought to design. And in case you were thinking maybe I should do something else for this baby? GIVING UP IS NOT AN OPTION. Dammit. (Janet.) Don't worry. I'm not out of ideas yet.

2005-Jul-22

Yesterday I completed the first draft of the design and started testing it. The problem is that in order to test the entire pattern, I have to knit an entire sixth of the blanket, because the pattern does not really repeat. The pattern stretches over the whole of one triangle (and there are six triangles in the blanket, since it is a hexagon). So the testing takes for-freakin'-ever - I'm not even close to done yet. (Further proof - like you needed it - that I instinctively do things the hard way.) So far it's looking fairly good, although I am not happy with what the eyelets do in some spots. But I am holding off on fiddling with the design until after I see how the whole thing comes out.

2005-Jul-19

I have decided to try and design a hexagonal lacy shawl for this baby - another design for my book. I've never really designed lace before, apart from a half-hearted effort about a year or so ago, so there is a possibility that the finished project will suck rocks. However, I think the idea is pretty good, and I'm very hopeful that I can make it work. I'm planning to use fingering weight yarn on 4mm needles, and will probably make it in the round so I won't have to go through the bother of sewing it up afterwards. My first instinct was to make it in green, since I don't know the sex of the baby, and green is a nice, gender-neutral colour. But then I gave myself a big mental slap upside the head and decided to go with a colour that I hadn't already used for my last umpty-gazillion projects. (Besides, the sweater I made for this family the last time they had a baby was...you guessed it...green.) So, I'm leaning towards white or yellow. Yellow appeals to me more because it's a more exciting colour than white (which of course technically isn't a 'colour' at all). Plus, it wouldn't show spit-up stains as much. Either way, my stash is inadequate for the task - Zellers doesn't carry fingering weight acrylic in bulk, so I only ever get a few small balls at a time. Therefore, I will have to go shopping for more yarn. Awww, shucky-darn. :)

2005-May-16

I'm still leaning towards the lace circular shawl idea. I did some designing last night and I think I've come up with a motif that I really like. Now all I have to do is figure out how to translate it into knitted lace.

2005-May-15

DH's family expands again! The baby is due around December and I'll be taking the opportunity to design something else for my book. Don't know what yet, but flushed from my success with the Snowdrop project, I'm thinking maybe a circular lace shawl-y thing would be nice. But then again, maybe not. Stay tuned.