I'm sorry to bore the people who don't knit again, but I'm in the thick of this project so it's kind of on my mind. Besides, it's not like knitting is the only limited-audience topic I ever write about. My blog has something to bore everyone at one time or another. (or maybe all the time!)
Thanks to Raynor Grace and Bummble, I have online advice on an alternate cast off method, which I think will work much better for me. Unfortunately I didn't get that far last night for two reasons: first, I had to work. Bummer eh? What can you do, we had an idea late in the day which would resolve a problem for a tense meeting first thing this morning.
Aside from that, I wouldn't have gotten to the casting off anyway because I got stuck on the buttonholes. The pattern calls for making buttonholes by casting off four stitches, then on the next row casting them back on. This makes a buttonhole which is parallel to the edge. Which you would rarely do in sewing. A buttonhole like that would gap and be unstable. In a sewn garment you would always make the buttonhole perpendicular to the edge, so the button pulls against the corner of the buttonhole and it doesn't gap. I also like to make keyhole buttonholes for added stability on that outer edge.
I looked online for knitted buttonhole variations, and all of them were parallel to the edge like my pattern. Maybe this is just the way it's done in knitting. But I'm having a hard time forcing myself to make a buttonhole like that. Especially such a large one. It just looks like it's going to gap open and the buttons are going to pop right out.
It seems to me that it would be easy to make a buttonhole perpendicular to the edge. Just knit the area in between two buttonholes for as many rows as you need, leaving all the other stitches on holders. Do that for all the buttonholes, and then join them all together at the top. You'd end up with a slit in the fabric for each buttonhole. Does that explanation make any sense? Is there a reason I don't want to do that?
I think I'm going to try it tonight and see how it turns out. I'll only have to pull out a couple of rows.
One more knitting question: Once a circular needle is removed from its packaging, how do I figure out what size it is? There doesn't seem to be a marking anywhere on the needle.
2 Comments
Re: knitting needle sizes--I have a little plastic thingy with holes in it, and you can stick the needle through the hole and see what size it is. Most knitting stores or craft stores will have this hanging with all the other knitting doodads.
your proposed buttonhole method would work just fine-- i've done that for a keyhole scarf. i think it's not used often because it's a bigger hassle. the only thing to look out for is doing too large a hole, but you could sew it tighter pretty easily without the stitches showing. if the buttons are really small you can sometimes get away with doing a yarnover eyelet.