theraineysisters knitting and so much more

It’s windy and cold here today. We even had a passing snow flurry this morning. So it’s a perfect day to turn one’s thoughts to spring, especially if long stretches of knitting tiny black stitches has become wearing.

That being said, I finally finished my Ode to Joy cardigan. The knitting of this piece was finished months ago. I just hadn’t been able to force myself to do the final finishing, especially weaving in ends and sewing on buttons. I hate sewing on buttons for some reason. I even batted my eyelashes at my sister in January and tried to get her to do it for me. It didn’t work. Yesterday, I wove in the ends. This morning, I tackled the buttons. (There were only three. How much whining does it take to sew on three buttons? Apparently lots.)

There was one legitimate issue with sewing on these buttons, in addition to the many issues that always come up (proper placement, deciding whether the shank is long enough, etc.). They are square buttons, and my intention had been to place them so that they “sat” on the sweater as squares instead of being turned so that they look like diamonds. The problem was that the way the shank was affixed to the button made that very difficult.

The buttons kept wanting to turn. I finally relented and just placed them as they insisted.

Lucy wants to know whether from the back she looks like a linebacker. (I told her no; don’t shatter her dream):

A Few Ending Points:

1. I’m trying to decide whether I will ever wear this without buttoning the buttons. If not, I may lightly baste the button band down to keep it from gapping slightly. (One tip: if you ever do that, sew it down where the outside edge of the band with the buttons sewn to it meets the inside edge of the buttonhole band. That way, the visible outer edge on top will look as if its been buttoned and not sewn.)

2. I had talked about lengthening the sweater considerably, but I didn’t. I made the lower band deeper and I blocked it somewhat longer. If you wanted to make this significantly longer, and wanted to keep the color shading, I figured out how. The problem was that I was past the point when I could have done so by the time I figured it out.

If you look at the back of the sweater, you’ll see that the pieces making it up are the same “height” as the matching front pieces but are twice as wide. That was done by casting on twice as many stitches, but doing two lines of decreases (forming the decorative triangle). If I had thought ahead, I could have started the front by making a third piece (which would have been the first piece I knitted). I would have cast on the same number of stitches, but done the two lines of decreases, roughly figuring out the color transitions on the fly. My basic front pieces are 8″ long; that would have given me a 4″ piece — plenty of extra length. On the back, I would have had to do four lines of decreases (creating two decorative triangles on the bottom piece).

All of that assumes I would have had enough extra yarn AND that the new triangle and double triangle pieces would still have looked cute. Who knows? I’ve probably lost you all by now anyway.

Someone asked me recently about my Little Assistant. He’s been visiting me since mid-November. I’ve become insanely attached to him and will blubber like a baby when he leaves, which will be soon. He’s taking a nap next to me right now.