Knitting -- my Fana jumper

So of course I had to try a Fana top to try and promote this Norwegian pattern, which is in the DG267 catalog I told you about.

The characteristic features of a Fana are:
1: narrow bands in your two (major) colors, 5 rows high; the middle row has single stitches in the other color. Traditionally these are black and white but nowadays other colors are cropping up. Alternate the entire length of the body and sleeves except:
2: a band in the yoke and at the top of the sleeve with the Fana stars.
3: usually a checkerboard at the bottom of body and sleeves although I have seen photos of knitwear without it.

Fanas can be either sweaters or jumpers; one website says the sweaters came out about 1900. DG267 shows both sweaters and jumpers. The photos at this site show one with sections on it like the sections on an Aran sweater.
https://www.starsandfield.com/weblog/2019/11/9/the-kirsten-project-fana-sweaters-of-norway

There are also gloves (votter) and socks (sokker). The sock pattern here uses 3-row stripes. Notice that the heel flap is checkerboard but where the pattern turns the heel is solid color; so is the toe.
https://knittingtraditions.com/product/norwegian-fana-socks/

Here are photos of mittens from Sandnes Garn. Some are Fana and some are Selbu.
https://www.sandnesgarn.no/catalogsearch/result/?q=votter#q=votter&idx=production_default_products&p=0&fR%5Bsg_theme%5D%5B0%5D=Tradisjonsstrikk&fR%5Bsg_type%5D%5B0%5D=Strikke&is_v=1

Here is a chart for the Fana star.

Again, like the Mariusgenser, this pattern is usually made in DK/sport. No matter which weight I used, I would have to do some finagling. For example, my back is an inch shorter than in other people with my measurements. That's one of the reasons the pattern went below the armpits on my Mariusgenser. If I did as many stripes as in the jumper in DG267, the jumper would go well below my waist and I would need extra width to go around my hips.

With Palette, I need 312 stitches in the hem to fit 26 stars around the top. But the checkerboard at hem and wrists is much smaller than if I used DK. I could make the checks 9x9 instead of 3x3, but it would add 3-4 inches to the body. (And of course I would have to bleed those stitches out in the stripes so as to only have 312 stitches when I got to the stars.) The alternatives would be to take out 6 of the stripes or do only a 3-level checkerboard instead of 5. So I stuck with the stitch counts in the motifs that I found in the DG267 instructions.

You may not have to face these issues but I'm telling you about finagles because if you're going to knit by hand for yourself, you deserve something that fits you. We've all had enough of the mass-produced alternative to custom-fitting.

Anyway, at the hem do 3 rounds of K1/P1 rib and then work the checkerboard.  Knit in the round until you get to the armpits and then work on the flat, and knit together at the shoulders. Work a K1/P1 turtleneck as shown in the photo. Work the sleeves in either direction, with the 3 rounds of K1/P1 rib at the cuffs. I suggest working bottom up and then joining to the body as soon as you finish.

The tradition is to have white dots on the black stripes and black dots on the white stripes. I had a skein of Tarragon and I used that for all the dots. Of course, nowadays with the multi-color fanas shown on Ravelry, the knitters had to figure something else out. 

Oh yes: here's a chart for the Selbu Rose. Notice that the petals are not joined; that's the difference between this and the rays of the Fana star. I don't know if one of them is a version of the other but the Selbu rose is known from the Renaissance period and was resurrected in the 1950s. I don't know how far back the Fana pattern goes.

These and the X on the Setesdal pattern are traditional Norwegian motifs. If you see a sweater or jumper advertised as Fair Isle and they have these three motifs, probably whoever wrote the promotional copy didn't know what he was talking about.