The Perfect Buttons

Made a quickie visit to JoAnn's today and found these perfect buttons for my Top-Down Cardi. They were exactly what I was looking for. I usually start stressing about buttons before I even cast on and had in my mind that I wanted brownish buttons to pick up the taupe color. So after cruising through the racks for my allotted 15 minutes, I finally spied these. Of course, the miracle of all miracles is that I didn't even have the sweater with me, yet here they are and they look great.

Isn't it funny how buttons can make or break an garment. There used to be an old fashioned button shop here in Seattle, up in the Capital Hill neighborhood. My grandmothers would go there to find just the right buttons, as did my mother when she did a lot of custom sewing. I always thought the place was magic--all those little drawers filled with buttons. It was like something out of Harry Potter. There are still shops like this in NYC and every time I go, I always book a hotel in the garment district so I can hang out in the button and trim shops. And when all else fails, my mom has jars and jars of buttons and we'll dump them out on her table and sort them looking for just the right one.

As for the cardi progress, I infamously said in my last post, "I cast it on about three weeks ago, and I am nearly finished. At least I feel like I am as I cruise through this first sleeve." Ahem, well, it wasn't quite the cruise I thought. I got the first sleeve done and realized I'd done a terrible job of decreasing and it was uneven. That will teach me to knit during a 24 marathon. So during the Super Bowl (Hey, I wasn't stressing, the Seahawks weren't playing) I hooked the sleeve up to the ballwinder and frogged the whole darn thing.


So now I can say, with fingers crossed and no ego, that I think I will be finished with the rest of the cardi tonight. At least, here is how far I am with the second sleeve. So down to the cuff tonight and finish it. I hope. That's the plan. But then again, I did just get Disk 2 of Season 2 of 24.