button button who's got the button

So I ventured bravely out on Sunday -- I was on a mission, the button would not purchase itself, and I've got deadlines!  So risking life and limb, I ended up driving around to 4 stores before finally finding a decent selection of buttons at Hancock Fabricks.  Never mind that it was 20 miles away.  Never mind that the first place I went to, AC Moore, said they didn't even carry buttons!  I was dumbfounded.  Truth be told, I was a little underwhelmed by the selection, but at this point I was getting a little desperate, so I figured my standards had to be lowered.  Here's what I came up with as a set of possibilities:

What did I end up choosing?  I think you'll be surprised.  If anyone's reading, feel free to comment and guess!  I've made a bit of progress since Sunday night, and hope to have a finished sweater tomorrow night (on deadline!)

While out on Sunday, I also stopped by my LYS (it's only taken me 3 visits to declare it mine).  I had picked up a set of square dpns by Kollage last time, and can I just say, LOVE them!

You may not be able to tell from the pictures, but each one is neatly labeled with the company name and size -- both US & mm.  But more importantly, they're squared off -- and it actually makes it really easy to knit off of!  I don't know why this hasn't been popularized yet.  Especially for the smaller size (these are US 2s), I found that I hardly had to dig for the stitch.  So I went and picked up a circular needle in the same family, and will report back once I've had a chance to use it.

do over

Well, that clearly didn't start out as well as I was intending.  I've been knitting a lot, but not blogging about any of it.  So take two.

These days I've got two projects on my needles, both baby gifts.  The good thing about baby-sized items is that they knit quickly.  The only problem is when you keep ripping out what you've done night after night, so that you really don't have much progress to show for your work.  Still, here's a shot of Helena:

I started this project on January 2nd (thank you Ravelry for remembering for me!) and as you can see, I've just now completed the first lace pattern repeat.  I'm knitting the largest size, so at 178 stitches per round, each repeat is going to take me some time.  It doesn't help that I have to stop and count my stitches at each row because I seem to be having difficulty paying attention to my knitting.  I really wanted to have this complete by next Friday (less than 1 week away), but it doesn't look like that's going to happen.

The other project is the cutest baby cardigan, a Debbie Bliss pattern.  I'm just about done with this one (also with Friday's deadline), all that's left is seaming, button, and final blocking (if any is needed, I've never actually blocked anything before...).  

Hit a slight snag this weekend -- I was planning to go button shopping today, but the snow had other ideas, and the roads didn't really look clear enough for me to venture out.  So I'm crossing my fingers that tomorrow will be a better day, otherwise I will have two very incomplete projects.  

Opening shop

Setting up a new blog to chronicle my knitting adventures. This is mostly for my own benefit and to (hopefully) learn from my previous mistakes. But should anyone out there find it useful, more power to ya. Expect to see pictures and updates on what I've currently been working on and hopefully a picture of the finished product.