FO: Pondemonium!

The li'l white ducks and li'l green frogs and li'l black water skippers and li'l red snakes are all done -- knitted, embroidered, washed, and blocked! Pondemonium, after many false starts and frogging (appropriate, I suppose!) is finally finished! The embroidery itself took three evenings by itself to finish, and of course there was the Weaving In of Ends to accomplish. Since I'd woven many in as I went along, that wasn't too bad.

I used all-cotton Elann Sonata, and knowing that the cotton wouldn't be as elastic as the Rowan Wool Cotton that the pattern called for, I decided to do a button placket in one shoulder. A few rows before finishing the right shoulder, I ran a row of purl stitches, then did six rows of stockinette, then another row of purl stitches, and bound off. I worked four 2-stitch buttonholes in the front placket.

Then I had to find some appropriate buttons. Just plain buttons, maybe in white or blue, would have been okay, but I wanted to find something with a pond theme. Jo-Ann Fabrics has a display of fancy buttons for scrapbooks and craft projects, so I searched their offerings. There were frog buttons and duckling buttons, but all were too big, and complicated enough that buttoning in a wiggly baby would have been a challenge. After some looking, I found these green plastic turtle buttons. No turtles in the pattern, but it still fits the pond theme, and a row of little green turtles marching up one shoulder looks awfuly cute.

The sweater was much admired by the knitting group this afternoon!