Saving the Knitting

One of the things that happens when you are mostly living alone, not by choice, is that evenings can stretch long.  That couple hours in a busy day that everyone else looks forward to, stretch and drag on and many nights, I cannot wait till it is a decent, early but decent, time to go to bed.  Some nights, I start clock watching before 7 p.m.  

One of the ways, I'm trying to deal with this is to leave some of my knitting for evenings. I think I also mentioned that I signed up for Audible Books.  I use Librivox too.  How lovely it is that I can put on a book and somebody will read me a story and I can knit.  I have difficulty settling down to books in the daytime, but in the evening, it is wonderful.

In order to save knitting for later in the day today, I picked up something that I meant to do all last winter.  The chilly air of the last few days reminded me about it.

 

I knit an Argo last fall and wore it all winter under a vest.  It did not have buttons.  I used and lost some of my favourite pins trying to keep it closed.  Today, I decided it was time for buttons.

The buttons I planned to use on this sweater are heavy.  

Heavy buttons meant I needed more than the usual sewing on of the buttons. First up, the Gros Grain Ribbon Tutorial from the Knitmore Girls followed by the Coture Button Tutorial.  It seemed like a really smart way to support these heavy funky buttons.

So, after a couple hours of work, I have this.

All buttons securely on board!

I love these moosey buttons.  It's such a great blend of button and fabric/fibre.  (The sweater is made from Custom Woollen Mills 2 ply).  The combination of grays looks wonderful.

And here are the support buttons, secured well on the opposite side, though, not even remotely neatly.  Still they are fixed in place and do exactly what I needed them to do, which was to hold up the heavy front button. I do have one small thing I should have changed.  I should have left a little more space between the buttons.  I should have inserted a match or small dpn between the two to give the fabric room to slip under the button.  

I should also note that I did not use the Gros Grain ribbon that Gigi Knitmore recommends.  I have red, brown and cream but nothing that looked right with this sweater.  I did find this bias tape in my supplies, and have use it here doubled for a little more firmness.  It was a fight to keep it in place and it was a little stiff and hard to get my needle through.  Gros Grain ribbon would have given me a much neater finish and would have hidden the stitches almost completely.  This does the job.  But that is all it does.  I will do it right next time.

An afternoon, more or less well wasted.  And now I think I have earned myself a wee nap.