7 Random Things

I've been tagged! I'm guessing this has been going around, but I'm 653 posts behind on bloglines! So please excuse me if I am way behind on this.

7 Random Things about me:

- I grew up in a small farming community in South Jersey
- I've managed to survive in the Fashion Industry for 5 years
- If fashion didn't work out, I wanted to be a drag racer
- I've been on the stage at Radio City Music Hall (Receiving BFA medal at graduation from FIT)
- I took ballet for 7 years before quitting to study guitar
- I've lived in NYC for 8 years and have probably spent no more than 25 weekends here in that time (I enjoy my SJ quiet country time!)
- My fiance and I share the same birthday

If you would like to do this, consider yourself tagged!

I hope to have some knitting content soon! Sorry to be MIA!

Green Living

I came across this post today from Right Out Loud about living greener. I just figured I'd share on behalf of Knitters Against Global Warming.

This also makes me think about what I have done to live a little greener since I started this little thing back in January. Well, being in the city it's easy to utilize public transportation, so that feels like cheating. But I have contacted the electric company and changed to wind generated power, buy local when I can and only drive my car sparingly when I am back home in Jersey. Every little bit helps right!

If you have posted about living greener on your blog (even if it hasn't been recent), drop me a line and I'll post a link here. Sharing ideas is just one of the many ways to help make a difference!

Been Awhile

Feels like I haven't updated in so long! Things have still been crazy at work and my free time has been spent working on several secret projects that are in the works. So with that said, don't know how often I'll be able to update over the next month or so. It's nice to have the work coming in – I just hope that I haven't gotten in over my head!

I've also been working on formatting quite a few new patterns for One Planet, getting our designs started for fall and helping decide on a few new yarns to add to the lines.

I'm still working on the design inspiration project, but I don't know the next time I will be able to post an update. I hope some of you are still interested! I know it's taken a bit longer to go through than I would have liked. It's such a cute sweater and now I just can't wait to get it finished up. It's almost a shame it's too warm now to wear!

And on a completely different note – just won tickets to go see Elvis Costello and the Impostors this weekend! It will be a much needed night out, I can assure you!

P.S. If you guys have heard of Ravelry, I have one invitation up for grabs if you are interested. Just email me at neoknits AT yahoo DOT com and I'll hook you up. They opened up a sign up list recently and were swamped with over 2,000 requests at last count! So if you check it out and aren't quick enough to email, be patient, they are busy getting ready for everyone!

The Design Process: Buttonbands

Finally! I am nearing the end of my little series. Not that it's a good thing, it's just exciting to finally be able to show you the final project and compare the original idea to the final product. I have to say, I think it's going to be pretty close to the original concept, which is not always the case with these things. I still have not seamed the sides or sewn on the buttons! I need to get on that!

So on to buttonbands!

I don't really use a set number when figuring out how many stitches to pick up. Usually I divide the number of rows by the numbers of stitches to get a ratio, but sometimes I don't. For this project, I decided to go with the ratio of 4 to 5. So out of every 5 sts, I pick up 4 of them.

For this design, I was able to pick up stitches continually from right bottom hem to left bottom hem, which makes things a lot easier! Whenever I hit a change (placket to neck, front neck to back neck) I placed a stitch marker so I can easily count the stitches to fill into the pattern.

Once stitches had been counted, I needed to figure out the placement of the buttonholes before proceeding. I counted up and had 92 sts from left front hem to the beginning of the V neck. So........

First you figure out how many stitches your button will need to pass through and how many buttons total will be used. I need 5 buttons and 5 sts for each button, so that will take up 25 sts (5x5).

I also need a few stitches at the top and bottom of the placket. You can't start buttonholes right at the edge! So I choose 4 for the top and 4 for the bottom.

Now we need to figure out how many stitches are in between each buttonhole. So we take 92 sts - 25 sts = 67 sts - 8 sts = 59 sts. Now we divide that by the number of spaces: 59/4= 14.75. Hmm, not an even number. So we add 2 sts to the top and 1 st to the bottom to make it an even 14.

So we have 6 sts for the bottom, 5 sts for each buttonhole, 14 sts between each and 5 sts on top!

Now that I have that info, I can figure out how many rows I'll need (9). And I decide to use a 1 row buttonhole, so I place it after the 4th row to keep things looking even.

Next up: Pockets? We'll see!