Button, Button, Who's Got The Button

The Ribbon Bow Tie Method

It's been brought to my attention that my "cuff-link" solution to buttons on knitted items that are bulky, just doesn't work for everyone. I've been asked to post other fun and hopefully easy ways to deal with the button dilemma.

First off is the ribbon tie alternative. With this, you select a complimentary ribbon at the store. Four yards should do you.

Cut off a yard of the ribbon and double it to make a loop. Push the loop through the top of the collar from the front to the back, and then again back to front so that you have the loop and the ends both on the front of the collar. Then push the two ends through the loop and pull snug. You have your first lace.

On the other end of the collar do the same, then tie the two laces together in a bow knot like the bow in the picture. Do the same for the bottom bow. If it's too long, snip it off to your preferred length.

The Crochet Method


With this method, you haul out the crochet hook and crochet button holes up on end of the collar. Start by attaching the yarn to the top or the bottom of the collar, single crochet a couple of stitches to anchor, then chain 1, 2 or 3 stitches and then go back down and put a single crochet in the next stitch on the collar. The number of free floating chains you create depends on the size of the button and you can check that by trying to push the button through the chain loop you've created.

Make as many loops as you have buttons. You would then sew the buttons to the other end of the collar so that they correspond with your crocheted button holes. Voila!

The Knit Method


And finally, the knit method. Knitted buttonholes take a lot more prior planning in that you have to decide before you finish the collar how many buttonholes you want and where you want to place them on the collar. In this example we're using two large buttons.

A basic knitted buttonhole is a bind-off and then cast on. You'll see here, that our button needs a 3 stitch space to pass through. So we've cast off three stitches (as if we were ending the work) and then immediately gone back and cast three stitches on to the right needle (orange yarn). After you cast on, you keep on knitting until you get to the place where you want your next button hole. Again, cast off 3, cast 3 onto the right needle and continue knitting. Once the buttonholes are complete you'll need to knit a few more rows.

Rule of thumb on button holes is to figure out how many stitches the button covers when you lay it on the collar, then subtract 1 or 2 from that and use that number for your bind-off. If your buttonhole ends up being too large, and gapes, you can always go back and cheat and use a darning needle and yarn and sew it up a little on either side to make it snugger.

If your buttons are small enough to be pushed through the knitted material, don't even make a buttonhole!

Securing the Buttons

Finally, when using Buttons, you'll want to put some ease in between the button and the knitted fabric. That is, you don't want to sew the button down tight. Take a look at the buttons on a cardigan or other knitted garment you already have. You'll see that there is a shank of thread between the button and the cloth it's attached to in order to accommodate the thickness of the material it's being buttoned to.

That's it for the Buttons Post. Hope it helps! If not, don't hesitate to ask for clarification!!

The Other Part of Prodigal

If you look up the word prodigal in the dictionary, you get words like spend-thrift, profligate, and wastrel. These are all good definitions of how one goes about becoming prodigal, but not how one goes about being prodigal. While becoming prodigal involves a great deal of action, primarily ill-advised action, being prodigal involves such complete inaction as to render oneself invisible. Being prodigal involves being lost. Being prodigal is the absence that is only seen when a single member of a pair is visible.

So how does prodigal have anything to do with socks. It has to do with creating only ONE sock. It has to do with challenging the idea that socks only come in pairs. It has to do with creating a lot of individual socks that are sometimes deceptively similar in size and shape, but otherwise completely unique.

What does Prodigal have to do with wearing socks? It has to do with wearing socks that might be made from the same skein of yarn, and might not. It has to do with wearing socks that have absolutely nothing to do with each other aesthetically. We're not talking one brown sock and one navy blue, here.

What does it mean when you wear socks that cannot be blamed on a dark morning or a inattention to detail, socks that are so radically different from each other that even color-blindness cannot be plead? It means that above the hem you conform and below it you retain your rights.

It means a political statement. It means that one has chosen NOT to part one's hair. It means choosing NOT to wear casual togs (that actually cost more than formal business attire) on "Casual Friday." It means choosing NOT to wear "business casual" when one is doing business. It means choosing to say, publically, that the Kafeteria Kulture is dead and Less is NOT More. Less is Less.

I want Less Monotonous Manufactured Crap. I want luxury and diversity.

That means consistently wearing business clothes to work along with socks that appear to be, but are not mismatched. They cannot be mismatched because they are matchlessly and luxuriously beautiful.

Missy's Loop Hole

The most gratifying thing about teaching someone how to do something is the amount you learn yourself. And not just old techniques that have been revamped by new designers and given a new flash name by them, but new ways of seeing.

Specifically, multimedia in fiber art, is something that wilted in the neglected back corner of the art department when I was a child and is now something that is so hot it's very nearly passe already.

But before multi-media is discarded as a way to work in fiber, several other dyed in the wool concepts need to be jetisoned. Correct lengths for scarves ... out the window. Correct size and shape for hats ... down the toilet. Correct types of yarns, buttons and button holes for handmade clothing ... in the garbage.

A student came up with a few images of scarves she'd be interested in making and two of the three incorporated over sized buttons. The technique the student thought they needed to learn was making button-holes. The technique they actually needed to learn was misdirection of the eye.

The primary scarf pattern pictured here, Missy's Loop Hole, is very, very simple and employs one type of button hole technique, though it's not used for buttons. The other three scarves will employ the misdirection of the eye. Though I'm calling them scarves, these patterns could just as easily be called neck cuffs or dickeys.

This simple cabled neck cuff, though takes on a slightly different look depending on whether it's executed in Red Heart Grande Craft Yarn (like the one at the top of this posting) or in handspun wool dyed "Sky Blue." In both cases, bright yellow asterisk buttons are used deceptively. In both cases, too much fun. In both cases, less than 100 yards of yarn and less than 8 hours spent completing this necessary accessory.

Yellow Wheat Sonja Van Gogh Head Band

Awhile back I started reading about different kinds of novelty yarns that involved rough drum carding of different colors so that the colors and textures remained distinct in the finished roving. At that time I had some extra unspun wool that I'd dyed for a couple of different projects. In looking at the colors -- gold ochre and chestnut brown -- I realized they reminded me of one of my favorite Van Gogh paintings .... "Wheat Field with Crows."

The left-over wool became three short skeins of yarn. One skein became a neck cuff. One may be enough for mittens -- though that may be a prodigal thought. The third wasn't really large enough for anything other than something small, fast, and useful.

background on the pattern

Currently fashion demands we keep our ears warm with unisex ear muffs or slip-on fleece head bands. These accessories cost around $20 to $30 dollars, depend on the sweat of workers in 3rd world countries, send our money elsewhere and are... well ... ugly. I don't like slavery. I don't like shipping jobs overseas. I don't like sending money elsewhere to buy trash. And finally, I don't like being forced to pay for ugly.

The best way to strike back? Design something that is quick and simple to make that employs the basic skills of knitting and purling. Add in a couple of intermediate, but actually quite easy, techniques to expand the skills. And, last but definately not least, make it attractive on a visual and fashion level.

color and retro

1940s movies are full of women who were stars of the silver-screen for swimming or dancing or skating better than anyone else. Sonja Henie often wore a simple headband that kept her ears warm, her bangs out of her eyes and her medium-long hair bouncing behind her as she leapt, twirled, spun and danced across the ice. These headbands tied under the chin and often appeared to be made of embroidered felt or kid leather with rabbit fur lining or intarsia knitted wool.

And, of course, the whole ear connection thing with ears of wheat and Van Gogh ears was irresistable.Yellow Wheat Sonja Van Gogh Head Band is the result and you can find the pattern over on prodigalsock.com by clicking on the name or by clicking the Prodigal Sock picture, upper left.

The only thing I have left to do, to make it complete, is bake some sculpey crow baubles to sew on here and there. I think I'll resist adding some red gauze to the right side.

I'll be putting together a collection of ear-warmer designs for sale in a couple of weeks. Let me know if you'd be interested. In the meantime, make yourself a unique earwarmer to celebrate women who do things better than anyone else, individual vision and, well, ears.

Never Quite Enough for Two

This blog isn't about conservation. It isn't about buying enough yarn in the same dye-lot in order to finish a project. It isn't about forcing a certain number of stitches-per-inch from a specific type of yarn on a specific size of needle. This blog is about profligate, spend-thrift, wild and unconstrained creation and the babbling that goes along with it. This blog is about starting at the end and working to the beginning.

Not quite enough for two but way too much for ten. Isn't that the absolute foundation, the universal precursor, to all prodigals. For me, a prodigal sock is not only that second-of-a-pair that never becomes real. For me, a prodigal is a creation that stumbles before completion.

Sometimes I over-estimate the size of a skein. Halfway through the second sock I'm out of yarn, and I end up with one sock and a squiggly ball of not-quite-a-sock yarn.

Sometimes a Prodigal is caused by an over-enthusiastic idea about a new kind of heel or toe or bright hopes for a lace pattern. Once started, the learning or working process becomes so taxing that after the first sock is finished a second is unthinkable.

Sometimes a Prodigal Sock is caused by a sudden and vicious attack of ennui. The yarn was beautiful and the pattern was interesting but the merging of stitches and fiber muddies and tangles and leaves a truly ugly single sock in my lap. I not only begin to doubt the yarn, I begin to doubt my ability to create.

Prodigals don't have to be socks and they don't all belong to me.

In the United States alone, there are millions of sweaters hidden in drawers and under hampers, perfect except they are minus one arm. There are hundreds of thousands of nearly finished afghans stuffed in the back corners of closets. The knitting needles or afghan or crochet hooks are still in place. The completed portion of the throws are neatly wrapped around the remaining unworked skeins of yarn.

I don't need to do any surveys to say this is true. I don't need any fact-finding safaris through knitting-circles and needlework shops. I don't need hard factual data supplied by accountants with abaci and brief cases. I know those are good numbers on unfinished sweaters and afghans. All I have to do is look in my closet and under the hamper, count the number of fiber related blogs on the web and do the math.

Prodigals happen to everyone. Prodigals happen when we somehow overstep and have no idea of how to gracefully recover from our fall into reality.

My trip-up has always been the short skein. What looks like enough yarn for a few socks, ends up being enough for 1-1/2. What looks like enough yarn for three caps, is actually enough for 3/4 of one. No amount of weighing, measuring or wraps-per-inch checking helps.

I've found a way around the short skein pitfall by changing the direction I travel in the creation process. I no longer look for the perfect finished yarn to re-create a perfect finished pattern. Now I decide I want to find a new way to make something to do something. Then I think about it. Then I draw it. Then I spin for it. Then I start and stop and rip, and start and stop, and start again.

Sometimes, when I'm done I have a pattern that starts at the end and moves towards the beginning, at least one sample item, and occasionally, a couple of skeins of one-of-a-kind yarn for sale.  Othertimes, I throw it all in the garbage.  Occasionally, I don't even take the needles out first.  Just straight in the trash.


ProdigalSock is here so that I can share the process with you.  There will be a lot of stumbling, there will be a lot of creating and there will be a lot of babbling about it.