Buttons for my February Lady Sweater

Libby was hit by a semi-truck this morning. She seems to be doing well under the circumstances and only has some serious whiplash. Thank goodness it wasn't anything more serious and thank goodness her kids were not in the vehicle at the time! Please say a prayer for her speedy recovery and that no hidden injuries pop up later.

I don't know if there is something going on today. Miss M and I were at the Sunnyvale Public Library today. We left the library around noon and while I was getting her back into her car seat I heard a loud noise. I looked toward the direction of the sound but couldn't see what happened until one of the parked cars left. A woman apparently drove her entire car up onto the curb! OMG, people could be standing or walking there! Miss M & I could have been walking there on the way to/from our car. I was relieved to see that nobody was injured. I don't know if she was a bit heavy footed on the gas pedal as she was parking her car or whether her brakes failed. If the car hadn't stopped where it did, it would have hit the parked car on the other side of that corner. I'm starting to think there should be bollards to prevent people from driving up the curb and possibly running people over.

Hmmm... maybe it's just safer to stay at home...

----------<>----------

Stephanella is celebrating her first knitting success, a silk lace scarf, by having a contest on her blog, check it out.

Lea is having a contest here, all you need to do is leave comments blog posts dated between July 10 and July 26.

----------<>----------

.

February Lady Sweater

Here is the beginning of my February Lady Sweater. It's not much. I've worked a few of those raglan increase rows (Row 5) and am not very happy with how mine looks. It feels "holey" to me. I wonder if I would get better results by using 4.5 mm (US7) needles instead of 5 mm (US8) needles. I'm knitting this with Elann Superwash Bamboo yarn. You can't see the buttonhole (left side), but it's approximately where the white stitch marker (right side) is located; I put the stitch marker there as a guide to where to put the button. I am using two of my new row counters for this project, one to keep track of how many times I work a Row 5 & Row 6 pair and the other to keep track of which row I'm on.

I found a calculator to figure out how to evenly space increases. It looks like a handy resource. I'm using it for the section where we're supposed to do this:

Work 41 (38, 47, 41, 41, 38, 39) YOs spaced evenly between the 197 (207, 219, 239, 267, 291, 311) center stitches

For the size I'm making (cast on 83), this works out to:

K2, (YO, K4)x8, (YO, K5)x31, (YO, K4)x7, YO, K2

Although I may have to recalculate if it turns out I need to go down a needle size to 4.5 mm and maybe try casting on for the next size up to compensate. The worsted weight yarn I am knitting with knits mork like DK weight for me. Oh, did I mention I haven't bothered to swatch? Ya I know, bad habit.

I mentioned in my Wednesday post that I picked up some buttons that might go with my February Lady Sweater. It feels like aeons ago even though that was only 2 days ago. My sense of time is out of whack.

I didn't go anywhere exciting to look for my buttons, I just went to my local Jo-Ann. Choosing buttons is more difficult than it sounds. I was drawn to some buttons that looked pretty but would definitely not work with my sweater: wrong color, wrong size, wrong style. Yes, I brought what little of it I had knit up with me to the store. Of course, it's not easy to get a feel even when you hold the little button card on top of the knitting. For some reason, basic round buttons weren't wowing me, and I was drawn to this one:

Purple flower buttons

I haven't taken these buttons off the card yet. I can already see that my 2-stitch button hole will be too small, so there'll be some frogging to do if I use these buttons. I haven't decided whether this is a good choice. They're purple. There's not much contrast with the dark purple yarn. Maybe I should have chosen something ivory or wooden. And I'm not sure if the non-smooth edges will play nicely with knitting. Perhaps a smooth round button would be best?

----------<>----------

I was having some trouble with my last Booking Through Thursday post. No matter how many different ways I tried, I could not get my comment on the BTT site to appear. In fact, I could not leave a comment on any WordPress site even if I was logged into my WordPress account! I felt like I've been blacklisted. It turned out that the problem is the Akismet spam filter. I guess this is a feature that comes with all WordPress sites.

Anyhow, while I was slowly working through other people's BTT posts I discovered a book which looked interesting. It's The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox. The BTT post also had a link to the first chapter. I wish I could remember which BTT post it was so I could direct you to it. Anyhow I just got my hands on this and am adding it to my stack although I have no idea when I'll actually get around to reading it. I'm still working through The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien; I am almost finished with the first part, The Fellowship of the Ring.

.