you'll be green with envy...

I’ve finished the green hoodie - it’s so cute! the only thing I don’t like about it, it doesn’t fit me! Because the colour isn’t really me, I made it to fit my daughter-in-law, Agnieszka (cover of No 53 and Mom of Nathan and Rhiana). She’s just enough smaller than me, that it’s too snug, especially you know where. But, I have to say, I impressed myself and I’m going to make it again in another colour! The techniques are amazing and I finished up with coming up with a great little buttonhole that is awesome!
The hem and bands are started with every other needle, for two reasons - to create an easy picot hem, but also to reduce the thickness on the back side of the hem - the EON will make it lay flatter and be less bulky, which was great until I came to make the buttonhole band. I thought bholes would be a snap because I only needed a one stitch hole for the 15mm buttons I had - they are a nice pewter shade and surprise, I happened to have 9 in my stash - because the band is narrow - only 4 rows - I wanted a small button and lots of them would do the job nicely. I already had the holes in the lace to test out for size - what could be simpler? well, think again, MA!

The first swatch, I merely transferred a stitch over on the top side of the band, figuring that with the EON on the back (facing) side, the hole would go right through both sides - Not! On my second attempt, I decided I needed to incorporate the buttonhole into the facing and use 2 stitches - the hole was way too big, lumpy, stretched out and was awful. Okay, so rethink and play around a bit - the lightbulb came on and it was absolute brilliance - well, I’m not going to go on and on - you’ll see when you get the pattern!
Anyway, check out the lace - there’s another special technique here, where, to keep the pattern going near the edge of the knitting, you still want the travelling path of the stitches when they are moved with the 3 prong tool, but you don’t want a hole near or at the edge of the fabric, especially where the front band will go - it will all be in the pattern - I promise it will be ready for the end of March. The yarn I used is Touch of Silk, a DK yarn by Forsell from http://www.knittinggallery.com/