Thursday, March 25, 2010

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.

2 comments :

Helga Marie Bee said...

it turned out beautiful!!
and the self portrait is really fun also.

Clumsy Knitter said...

Oooh...those are some seriously nice buttons. Thanks for the link!

And that vest is making me think about re-thinking my policy about knitted vests. Too cute!