Cute As A Button
I’ve been distracted from my afghan squares and my mittens by a couple of very cute patterns.
The first is a pair of booties that I heard about on one of my many Yahoo! knitting groups. The pattern is on a blog and I believe the language is Dutch. There was a lot of talk on the knitting group about whether or not a translation is a violation of copyright law…. I admit to being confused about the issue because the pattern is available for free on the internet - I just don’t read Dutch! 
Anyway, there were a few translation tools suggested and with a better-than-basic knowledge of knitting and how knitting patterns are written, I could figure it out. I did need a little help for the flowers on the ends of the ties (they are crocheted). This pattern caused a storm of emails as everyone thought these were so adorable. Here is my finished pair:
I knit these over a weekend out of stash yarn (I think it’s Lion Brand “Jamie” yarn). My arms still have not recovered from that marathon of knitting!
After I finished these booties, I finally got all the information I needed to replicate a kid’s hat I saw at my Monday knitting group. Sandy had made this hat and it turned out so fabulous that I had to make one for my FGS (future grandbaby stash). I got the pattern name from Sandy, but she didn’t have the ball band from the yarn she used. She did remember that she bought it at Zandy’s, so I stopped over there one day when I was in Burnsville and asked if they knew what yarn was used. They knew exactly what I was referring to, and directed me to the yarn! They had to order the pattern, as they were out of stock. 
In the meantime, I was finishing the booties, so I had plenty to do - and I decided to look up the pattern on Ravelry to see what others had done. UGLY!!! I couldn’t believe it was the same hat. Once I got the pattern, I thought Sandy must have made alterations, but she insisted she had knit the pattern as written. Once I started knitting, I realized why I had thought she had made changes, and all was well. Here’s the hat I made:
Pattern: Loop d’Loop Hat & Scarf by Chris Bylsma (I only made the hat.)
Yarn: Nashua Handknits Wooly Stripes (2 skeins)
Needles: Size 8 (5.0 mm)
It took me only 2 days to knit this hat — very fun to watch it all come together! There are a couple of things I wasn’t thrilled about: the pattern tells you to knit until you reach the appropriate measurement, when the work is slightly stretched. What does that mean? How hard are you pulling on it? The other part was that the yarn clearly was the thing that made this so adorable, but the skein is only 88 yards and that’s not long enough to get a complete repeat on the color sequence, so when you add the 2nd skein, you don’t know “what comes next” to be able to continue in the intended sequence. As a result, while this side of the hat is cute, the back side doesn’t look the same, and is primarily blue, green and white. Still “ok” but not as cute as getting all the colors as in the photo.
Inbetween those two projects, I did manage to finish a few more afghan squares:
I got a little lazy on the pictures as I’m uploading these to Ravelry as well, and I’m running out of photo space before I have to start paying for it! I won’t be attending this month’s meeting for the Knitters’ Guild, but I’ll keep knitting (this is a year-long project, after all!) and will turn them all in when I make it to the next meeting. I still have lots of yarn left - and not enough time to knit it all up for afghan squares.
I did finally manage to spend some more time on my Lillyfield mittens (I’m trying to hold off on the Anemoi mittens so I can knit them with Mary). We had a “craft night” at church on Friday and I am now just a few rows from beginning the decreases for the top of the mitten. At last, I can share a photo-in-progress (but this is before Friday night’s knitting). Unfortunately, the magenta does not photograph well. It’s very hard to get the right color, and the yarn itself is multi-colored/shaded and it’s gorgeous in person - the color is very rich - but nearly impossible to capture in a photo. I did upload it to Ravelry on Friday, and have found that the designer has marked my mittens as a “fave”!!!!
This weekend I’m starting another new mitten (less intense, no chart to follow). Once I get some progress I’ll show it to you. I did end up buying the wrong an unintended color (102 instead of 101), so I’m hoping it will be as cute as the photo on the pattern. I’m also making the child’s small, and the photo shows a woman’s medium. That definitely changes the color sequencing, so we’ll see how it turns out.
There won’t be as much knitting going on this weekend as I’d like….I’ll be mostly working on taxes, taxes and more taxes! Filing all this stuff is getting to be a huge burden (payroll taxes paid weekly, sales tax filed and paid monthly - amidst the year end record-gathering for both business and personal taxes) - it never ends! Thank goodness knitting helps to reduce the stress!
So…how does a weird saying like “Cute As A Button” get started? What’s so cute about buttons?