Mon afghan

Captain's Log, Stardate 02.24.2009

I am extraordinarily proud of this. For Christmas, I wanted to knit something for my parents that would be really cool and personal, and sort of an heirloom. So I took the five family crests I had for my family (in Japanese, a family crest is called a “mon”) and graphed the designs on knitting graph paper so that I could knit intarsia panels of the mons.

I knit 5 intarsia panels and 4 plain panels and then sewed them together to make an afghan.








In Japan, family crests are carried by both male and female, so I used mons from both my parents' sides. Traditionally, mons are passed down from mother to daughter and from father to son, but there are sometimes cases of a son taking a mother’s mon or a husband taking his wife’s family’s mon and things like that.

I know we have more than 5 family crests, but we’ve lost some of them. My mom tried to find them all several years ago, but could only find these five. The fans mon was actually found on an extended family member’s gravestone somewhere. Neat, huh?

Anyway, Mom and Dad were very pleased to receive this, although it ended up being a reeeeeeeally late Christmas present. Originally, I’d thought to do a purl-knit stitch pattern, but I changed to intarsia (more difficult, but more easy to see the mon) and while I tried to get it done by Christmas, there was just no way.

I’m really happy with how it turned out. I hadn’t done intarsia on a completed project before—I’d only done practice swatches. And I’d certainly never graphed my own pattern. It ended up not being as bad as I expected. A more advanced knitter can see my mistakes if they get up close, but in general, I think the afghan looks pretty good.

If you’re on Ravelry, click here for the project info.