Botched button band

Forecast has been finished and blocked for a couple of weeks now.  It fits fabulously.  I found some buttons but stalled on sewing them on because I wasn't quite satisfied with the button bands.  Finally, though, I worked my way to pinning the buttons in place, just to see what a pseudo-finished-object might look like:

Not too bad, no?  Unfortunately, not that great, either.

I do like the contrast of the red against the grey (with the yellow of my walls, to boot -- hello, autumn!), but as you can see progressing downwards, the band becomes increasingly ruffly and fussy -- so much so that a couple of the lower buttons consistently get unbuttoned!  Oh dear.  Even after I read a ton of articles on how to pick up the stitches, accounting for the difference between stitch length and width.

The best thing to do is to frog both bands completely and reknit on smaller needles.  This time 'round I'm not going to slip the first stich of each row so the top edging tightens up a bit, and so the buttonholes end up a tad smaller.  There's no rush, really, since it's still summer (so hot during this photo shoot!).  Hopefully, the anticipation of having a new handknit sweater well and ready to wear in a couple of months will motivate me to get this done sooner rather than later.  Wishmeluck!

Hit-and-miss knitting

Remember the yarn that I got for myself on my birthday?  It's been through several iterations of summery shawls, all without success.  For some reason, I just can't seem to find a pattern that matches the colors of the yarn.  So sad.

I'd settled on making a long, rectangular scarf, and after a Ravelry search, decided on the One Skein Stole (Rav link).  But it ended up too airy for me.

Next, I discovered AeRang, and thought that the geometric pattern would be really neat.  I didn't want the stockinette triangles on the borders of the shawl, but for the life of me could not figure out how to continue the pattern and maintain the proper stitch count.  Saved by Ravelry again: someone else knit the shawl without the stockinette triangles!  In contacting that person, I made a new friend who very generously shared with me the chart she made to reflect her modifications.

By the third repeat, I was getting the hang of the pattern but losing my initial passion for it.  The geometric pattern seemed entirely obscured by the color variegations, and I felt that it would be a more worthwhile venture in a solid color.  I was getting frustrated by frogging and rewinding the yarn...



...but I frogged nevertheless.  And then started the now-ubiquitous Baktus scarf.  But (again) right after I started knitting it, I realized my poor matchup of yarn and project: this scarf is really best suited for stashbusting, and I wanted to preserve my pristine skein of yarn for something special -- as well as something I knew I'd use.

I didn't have the heart or energy to tink even this little bit, so it sits on my shelf as you see here, patiently awaiting its next incarnation.

Another jaunt on Ravelry (Obsessive? Me?  No way.) and I've got my eye on the Maja shawl as a possible contender.  I'm pretty hopeful, but, honestly, after so many misses my color confidence is a bit shot I'm hesitant to cast on.  Anybody out there have any suggestions?  Lemme know -- I'm all ears!



In the meantime, I dove into my stash of leftover sock yarns to cast on for Baktus.  I grabbed the remainders of the Lorna's Laces Camouflage from my dad's recent socks, and the ShiBui Knits yarn left over from a pair of gloves I'd made for DC last winter.  I'm alternating every two rows; the green of the ShiBui yarn is more semisolid so you don't see a distinct striping, but I quite like it.

At this sitting I'm already done with the scarf (garter stitch = perfect brainless bus knitting).  Instead of doing the decreases at the end of the row, I did them at the beginning, resulting in a parallelogram-shaped scarf.  (Weird to explain, I'll snap a pic soon.)  It looks neat, and will be a nice gift for someone.  I know, I know.  But it's too masculine to be a Knitting For Me FO...



Of course I have some softer and more feminine-colored sock yarns just itching to get on the needles.  What's pictured here isn't even all of it, but it's a good start. (Did I really make that many socks?  Sorting all the colors has been a nice trip down memory lane!)  I'm so glad to have discovered this pattern; looks like it's gonna be a garter stitch summer.  Well, it's back to Baktus-ing for me!