Break from Buttonholes
Posted by mtmom on November 23, 2008
Let’s do a little catching up here at BeautifulKnitting.
My hands started hurting this past week — probably from all the “precision knitting” I’d been doing for the Master Handknitter program — lots of seed stitch and ribbing and buttonholes! So I’ve had to take a break, limiting myself to “easy-listening” sorts of knitting projects, until the soft tissues settle down. But that also made me realise I hadn’t posted here about all those swatches. . . .
Swatch 17
Swatch 18
Swatch 19
Swatch 20
If I decide I’m completely satisfied with these, I’ll be able to say I’m done with buttonhole swatches. . . at least for now. 
Then there was picking up stitches along a curving neckline:
Swatch 21
I did this one twice, and may do it yet again. Any other Master’s candidates (or committee members) care to comment on this swatch and its ribbing?
In non-Master’s -related knitting. . . .
I’ve completed 2 more caps: one a “Kliban cap”, designed by Meg Swansen and available on Schoolhouse Press’s $1 one-sheet “Spun Out #8: Five Wooly Caps”, and the other my top-down version of Cathy-Cate’s “Grow-with-Me Baby Hat” in purple Classic Alpaca DK [that's a free pattern, y'all], posing unstretched and stretched, on each end of a yarn cone.
And I’ve cast on for a new one, this one I hope to give to my blue-loving niece for Christmas. It’s my own design, based on a Zig Zag rib pattern that Arenda Holladay used in a sock pattern for Cast On magazine last year — basically a travelling 2×2 rib. 
The yarn is DreamBaby DK — microfiber and nylon — very smooth, but a bit squeeky [squeaky?]. Not so bad that I don’t want to finish the cap (that’s why I frogged the Fiery Eyelash scarf), but I probably won’t go out of my way to use this yarn again. Knit ‘n’ learn!
Jean said
The blue for your niece’s cap is really pretty, my niece loves the color blue as well. I am not a master knitter by any means, so I hope you won’t mind the comment on your curved neck, your picked up stitches are so smooth, going into the rib beautifully. I would think that would be difficult to accomplish especially using contrasting yarns as you have. Each stich appears so uniform. My favorite buttonhole has to be your swatch #20, its very polished looking.
Maria said
I, too, like your Swatch #20 for the buttonholes. I believe that it works with every thickness of yarn…unless you want a bigger button.
Your Master Knitting is looking real good.