Scissors, Holes, Bands, and Plans

There's nothing like cutting a successful steek to make you feel good:

still a pullover...

snip, snip...

behold: a cardigan!

The steeks aren't perfect, there's a little bit of fraying that's making me a little nervous, but I'm planning to sew in some grosgrain ribbon to hide the edges, anyway, so it'll be fine.

I'm working on the button bands now, and I'm really happy with how they're coming along. They are double thick, and they feel sturdy and squishy and wonderful. Here's what I did:

Pick up stitches (I did roughly 3 sts for every 4 rows for a total of 119 sts). Next row (WS) purl into the front and back of every stitch. For every row from here on out, sl 1 wyf, k 1, rep to the end. For the button holes, I bound-off two stitches, knitting 2 together before I passed the previous stitch over, if that makes sense. I made 9 button holes. On the next row, I worked in pattern to 2 sts before the hole, ssk (makes for a cleaner edge) and CO 3 sts all the way across. The next row, I worked in pattern to the cast on sts, then purled and knit into each of the 3 newly cast on sts. Then it's just working in pattern till it's long enough and grafting to bind off.

buttonhole from the outside

buttonhole from the inside

I finally got my Spring IK in the mail today! It's been at home for nearly a week, now, but my dad's been sick so he didn't get a chance to mail it until yesterday. Several of us at SnB are going to do a KAL for the Whisper Cardigan in Malabrigo Lace. I bought my yarn on Tuesday in the color Garnet, which is a really pretty red-orange (surprise, surprise). It's really hard to photograph, so I won't bother posting a picture (although I took about a million trying to get it right). I'm really excited about knitting this with everybody. I think we're aiming to start at the beginning of March

I also got my Sundara yarn this week. Oh, my. It is pretty. The color is Burgundy Over Saffron and I haven't seen anyone else with this color on Ravelry, which is kind of exciting. I'm sort of waffling about my pattern choice right now. I think I might wait to see the Cookie A book that's coming out in April. I'm thinking I'd like to knit socks that have a spiraling pattern, and I think there's a pattern like that in the book. I'm weighing my options, and the planning is so much fun!