Button, button, who's got the button?!?

At no point in my life did I ever imagine I would give a flying fig about buttons. Sure, I enjoying having buttons on my clothes--without them, life would be rather drafty--but for most of my existence, buttons have been purely functional.

This no longer seems to be the case. Suddenly, I just cannot get enough buttons.

I visited etsy to look for some buttons for my Wicked Rib Eyelet Vest--the button selection at the local craft store leaves much to be desired.

My vest is a mossy green (hence the colorway, moss), so I wanted wooden buttons, but with a bit of flair.

And, I found these beauties:



And I thought they were just perfect. But these looked a bit lonely:



So, I offered to take them into my home too. And then, these managed to jump into my cart as well:




Sigh. I got all of these lovelies from Natural Resources. They shipped from Hong Kong, so they took a few weeks to get here, but for a total of 30 gorgeous wooden or coconut shell buttons (12 each of the little ones, and 6 of the biggies), I paid $10, including shipping. I think that's a darn good deal.

And I did, as planned, use some of them for my vest:



Pattern: Wicked Rib Eyelet Vest
Yarn: Knit Picks Merino Style in moss
Needles: I forget. 5, maybe?
Size: Small, 35"



I started this project a looooooooong time ago, and then got distracted by shiny objects and other things. Actually, I finished the back pretty quickly, then got the crazy idea of working both fronts at the same time on one needle, which turned into a tangled, confusing mess, and sapped all of my enthusiasm for the project. So I tucked it away in my WIP basket, never to be heard from again--until I decided to do some WIPs-dancing for Ravelympics. And was pleasantly surprised how quickly the knitting went once I made the intelligent decision to tackle each front separately.

This was easy knitting. The shaping got a little tricky, since you're shaping both sides of each front while trying to maintain a pattern--so you're trying to count rows, stitches, and pattern repeats simultaneously. But I made sure to make notes on the first front so the second front would match, and it turned out near-perfect, I think.

I finished this up several weeks ago, and have just been waiting on these gorgeous buttons. I don't particularly like sewing on buttons (trying to get them to line up with the buttonholes = exercise in futility), but was so eager to don the vest I did it with minimal griping, and finally got to wear my vest to work yesterday:


Note: I am not actually at work in this photo. I am sitting on my bed, after getting dressed for work, waiting patiently for the self-timer. I also have not brushed my hair.

In another news, I've reached 10% of my fundraising goal, but I've still got a long way to go. So keep those donations coming, and get your chance to win fun yarn-y prizes!

And in that vein, the Lovely Leann, who's donating a prize for this raffle, tells me she's changing things up with her etsy shop and heading to this address, where she'll have some yummy fiber-y treats up soon, so keep your eyes peeled.