Friday, April 25, 2008

Am I Insane?

Yes, I am. I am seriously insane.

The Petal sweater is done, almost. Seams sewn, ends hidden, steam blocked, done, except for the buttons.....sigh.

After spending waaaay too much time contemplating buttons this morning I ended up with these 3 choices.
As seen above, we have your traditional pewter buttons, some wannabe wooden buttons with an nifty spiral of "carved' circles on the surface, and some typical but tiny jewel colored pearl-ish plastic shanks.

The "wooden" buttons:
Not bad, I kinda like it just laying there, but I think they are tad bit too heavy for such a fitted sweater. This sweater fits so well that it's more of a top than a sweater, so I think the buttons are a bit much. (Yes, the colors do alternate between a blond "wood" and a red oak. Srsly, how many lots of 8 identical buttons do you have in your buttons jars???)

Next up the pewter buttons:
OK, not bad, they are a good size for this sweater, but the whole pewter thing is a little bit too traditional for my tastes. Which is the main reason I'm not even considering any of the bazillion gold buttons in the jars!

The tiny jewel colored buttons:
I'm liking these, unobtrusive, not traditional, but will require some creative button sewing cuz they really are too small in depth for a sweater. Frankly I'm afraid they will have a tendency to pop open and if I'm wearing this as a top.....lets just say wardrobe malfunctions aren't my thing. But oh they looks so nice, wish I could get the colors right for you. The top itself is nearly black it is such a dark navy, the buttons have deep jewel colors of red, purple, olive, and purple....they is purty.

So there I sat pondering the situation, when the insanity crept in. I had a brainstorm. Of course there are multiple never ending cyclones in my brain, but this thought fought its way to the top and sounds reasonable. It has replaced the wooden and pewter buttons on the likability scale, and is slowly edging out the olympic-button-sewing needy tiny jewel colored buttons. I'm considering dropping all the stitched of the front garter stitch button bands, working them back up in stockinette stitch and putting in a zipper. There, I said it out loud. It sounded better in my head.......sigh.

Any encouragement from the peanut gallery??? It wouldn't take much to entice me to take that plunge. If one person says it's not a totally insane, or just a little bit crazy, then I'm all in.

FYI
This top took 591 yards of worsted wt. at 15 st = 4 inches. I have another 916 yards of this yarn left.