Button, button, who's got the buttons?
Last night I finished off sleeve #2 of my Garter Yoke Cardigan, out of the Timber Romney I spun during last year's Tour de Fleece (thanks very much BBC online rebroadcast of the men's triathlon!). Today I laid that puppy out on the coffee table and had a good long think about buttons.
I pulled out my (admittedly not very large) button stash and pawed through for some possibilities. First up was the way plain option.
Plain, purple buttons. These look pretty good - they match the darker purple stripes pretty well, and are a good contrast with the more yellow bits.
Choice #2:
Some domed brown buttons with a stripe. Also a good choice, but a bit too big for the buttonholes. Onward...
Some engraved metal buttons. A better size choice, but I don't like the metallic against the handspun. The sweater is such a warm, autumnal palette, that the metal clashes pretty badly. One more option:
These are some gorgeous glass buttons that Mermaid gave me a while back, and they work surprisingly well (at least I'm surprised). They are mostly blue, with bits of pink, purple, green and grey. I really like how these look, and they are the best of the whole lot. However, there is one wee problem...
That pile there is the sum total of these buttons that I've got in my stash. Said button band requires ten, count 'em, 10 buttons. Bollocks! I guess this is a good example of an instance in which blindly following the pattern spacing for buttonholes is not necessarily the best plan if you have limited buttons in your stash.
The upside of this whole fiasco? I get to go back to the local button store tomorrow...result!
I pulled out my (admittedly not very large) button stash and pawed through for some possibilities. First up was the way plain option.
Plain, purple buttons. These look pretty good - they match the darker purple stripes pretty well, and are a good contrast with the more yellow bits.
Choice #2:
Some domed brown buttons with a stripe. Also a good choice, but a bit too big for the buttonholes. Onward...
Some engraved metal buttons. A better size choice, but I don't like the metallic against the handspun. The sweater is such a warm, autumnal palette, that the metal clashes pretty badly. One more option:
These are some gorgeous glass buttons that Mermaid gave me a while back, and they work surprisingly well (at least I'm surprised). They are mostly blue, with bits of pink, purple, green and grey. I really like how these look, and they are the best of the whole lot. However, there is one wee problem...
That pile there is the sum total of these buttons that I've got in my stash. Said button band requires ten, count 'em, 10 buttons. Bollocks! I guess this is a good example of an instance in which blindly following the pattern spacing for buttonholes is not necessarily the best plan if you have limited buttons in your stash.
The upside of this whole fiasco? I get to go back to the local button store tomorrow...result!