Little Knitter on the Prairie

I've finished the crochet work on both sets of Mary Jane slippers and now they each only need buttons and they'll be complete. I was driving along thinking about how I needed to swing by a store that sold buttons to pick some up when I remembered the post the Yarn Harlot recently made about her button box. I have a Stetson tin that I inherited from my DH's grandmother that is full of vintage and antique buttons (probably more vintage than antique).






Although I never met her, I love this tin of buttons. She was obviously a very frugal woman as many if not most of these buttons were clipped from garments and kept. You can still see the threads on many of them. Most of them are rather plain and utilitarian but there are some gems in there as well. For this project I was only after some basic black buttons so I dumped the tin and began sorting through them all.


These are the finalist and will be placed on the slippers for sizing and then I'll make my final decision. Now tonight I can sit down and sew them on and they will be officially done! Can't wait to have them finished. The crochet edging wasn't as intimidating as I thought it would be. I found some great tutorials (and videos) at NexStitch. They were very helpful and cleared up any questions I had.

Yesterday I also had my first class at Twist for trying to learn Two-at-a-Time Socks. Wow. For a while I felt as though I was trying to decipher written Russian but by the end I think I was finally grasping it all. At least that's what Jackie, one of the teachers, told me and I'll take that as proof.

I love the yarn I picked out.


I picked it up at Twist on Friday. I had a hard time narrowing down my choice but finally settled on this. It actually looks prettier after Shelly wound it up. I haven't heard of the company before. It's made by Family Pendragon and so far knits up beautifully. While I heard several ladies complaining that their yarn was splitting I didn't have any problems with mine. I say so far because I haven't made much progress yet.







I really enjoyed the class and hope I can spend some time this week getting the hang of the two-at-a-time socks. It's a bit much for me to wrap my head around but I think if I just keep at it, it will all come together. I love my DPNs but I would really love to work on and finish two socks at once. I'm all about efficiency and time management :-) I'll have to be a quick knitter this week since we're learning the heel at our next class on Saturday. And since I'm such a Type A with all things sewing related I'm going to frog them and re-start them again since the ribbing is off on one sock. But first I think I'll make another preemie hat tonight....