Fanatical Coat

The fruits of my research are beginning to pile up.  I've isolated some books that mention Fana sweaters, and marked their pages with sticky notes.  I'm waiting for two more books in the mail (old ones from Norway, via Germany and Australia) that hopefully will round out the collection.

But this week's big breakthrough was on the internet.  I had searched for Fana information high and low, using every engine and every word or combination of words I could think of.  Or so I thought.

Turns out if you're going to research a topic whose name is not in your native tongue, you should actually make sure you're translating that name properly.  Yep.  It seems that "Fana Sweater" (English) will deliver a few hits from the google-nator.  But "Fanakofte" (Norwegian for "jacket in the style of Fana") will really bring home the bacon.

Duh.

And then once I found the ten million blog posts from every modern Norwegian knitter who's made a Fana in the last few years, all I had to do was implement Google Translator to make sense of them.  But not exactly.  Because I don't speak Norwegian, and Translator doesn't speak Knitting.

Google Translator: "I made my Fanatical Coat for this the traditions technical."

Probably Means: "I made my Fanakofte using traditional techniques."

It's pretty hilarious.  Poor Translator is trying so hard, but it doesn't know knitting things at all. "Masker" means "stitch" in Norwegian, not that the knitter was wearing a mask.  I've had to take a few giggle breaks between attempts.  But thank goodness, photos are helpful in any language, and knitbloggers are great at showing what they mean.

Meanwhile, my own Fanatical Coat progresses.  I'm pretty in love with it so far, although the checkers were acting really corrugat-y at first.  I knew I'd left enough length in the floats, but the unblocked fabric still sucked in like a supermodel's stomach.  Scared me a little, so I finally broke down and hit it with some steam on the ironing board.  

Just as I had hoped, the checkers lay flat, given a little persuasion. Bullet dodged.   Can you imagine if I'd been lying to myself about the length of the floats and had to start over?  Thanks, Knitting!

I promised myself after nine stripes (1/2 of the number I need before it's time for the shoulder border) that I could go button shopping.

Man, I am a cheap date.