Pure Design

The next few months I have a lot of teaching gigs coming up, and I took the plunge and ordered (ahem) $400 worth of product to make knitting with wire kits to hawk at aforementioned teaching gigs. Oh, and the book. I can easily see myself becoming (becoming?) tiresome – I have to swallow hard and find the beauty in face to face retail!

I’m finishing up Jen’s sweater for Spirit Trail (this is going to be an amazing kit!) and worked up a nice i-cord button loop (knit directly onto the front as a combination placket/buttonloop/seam binding to cover the steeked front edge) Here’s a photo of it:

I-Cord Button Loop

Row 1 (RS) Pick up sts along front edge.

Row 2 (WS) Knit all sts

Row 3 (RS) Cast on 4 sts using cable cast on method. [Slip 4 sts from RH needle to LH needle, m1, k2, k2tog-LS] until there are 7 sts on the RH needle (including the 4 icord sts.)

Icord button loop – Slip 4 sts to a double pointed needle, working with two dpns only on these 4 sts, work icord for 10 rows (k4, slip these 4 sts to right end of dpn, repeat) When 10 rows have been worked, slip 4 icord sts to the left hand needle and continue edging to next buttonloop placement.

When all loops have been worked and you’re at the end of the row, turn work and purl back. K one row, p one row, then bind off all sts. Fold icord button loop band so loops pop out from edge and stitch bound off edge in place along wrong side of front.

Thought you’d enjoy a taste of one of the details – this is pretty fun to work up, and I can envision a lot of wonderful enhancements! It wouldn’t be appropriate for this jacket, but wouldn’t it be cool to work the icord loop on the other front edge until it was very, very long then tie it in a knot to create a button to match the loop?