Idle hands do not live at my house

The state fair is less than one month away. The three sweaters are registered. Two in the machine knitting category (green Amande and dancing elephants) and one in the hand knit (cloudberry). Photo below.

Since I finished the big summer knitting I've kept occupied by baking (some of which occurred with Belgian beer in hand).

But didn't the bars turn out beautifully?

The cookie bars are the chocolate oat bars from the joy of cooking. I'm modified a few things: I use 1/2 of the dough on the bottom not 1/3 as the recipe suggests and I added 2 drops of orange extract to the chocolate mixture. You couldn't identify that the extract was there, but I've made these enough times with the same ingredients every time to notice something was extra yummy about this batch.
Then there were the gnomes I made for the gnome gift exchange. My random giftee liked miniature cartoonish things. Did I succeed?

And finally some mandalas I've been working for cards. A future design might be the final inspiration for my tattoo. Or a variation of this one.

I have this thought in my head. I'm slowly honing my ability to get this idea out of my head and put it on paper. The ability to extract an idea from my head and create is so much easier with knitting. Practice makes capable.
Keep your hands busy!
Be excellent to each other!

That darned hemmed button band

Cloudberry cardigan is ready for the button band!

My first try I had picked up the outermost edge of the front piece - which meant that I wouldn't have the other side of that stitch to pick up to Kitchener and finish off the edge. Start over.

The photo above shows me picking up every right side of a stitch on the right side if the garment. That leaves the left side ready to be used in the end. And because of the gauge I did pick up every stitch - 2/3 going down would not have given me the correct length for the button band.

Every stitch is picked up and I knit some rows.

Then I placed the buttonhole stitches on waste yarn.

How to provisionally cast on for all eight button holes?

Super long crocheted chain.

And picked up every 13th and 14th loop on the chain for my provisional cast on stitches. As you can see in the photo this created the hole for the buttons. I knit 8 rows, did the picot row and purl row, and then 8 more rows. I then placed the two stitches from my live stitches and the two provisionally cast on stitches on a safety pin to hold then while I finish the hemmed button band.

After placing those on a safety pin I picked you the two stitches from the waste yarn. This created a seamless edge for one side of the button hole.

I kept knitting until I have the six rows in between the button hole and the edge of the sweater.

This is when I picked up the other side of that original stitch. I kitchenered the live stitches with the picked up stitches to create another seamless edge.

With the kitchenered edge done I just had to resolve the other side of the button holes. See all those safety pins? I put the first two stitches from the safety pin on a needle and the last two on another needle. I then kitchenered these stitches together to create another seamless edge for the button hole.

This means that both sides of the button hole have seamless edges. I craftily used the same yarn all the way down the button holes for doing kitchener, just knotting it along the way to ensure it can't be undone. This saved a lot of weaving in later.

With a completed button band it was time and weave in all ends. AND BLOCK! I was so ecstatic putting this sweater on the blocking mat. It has been on the needles since November, 8+ months of being continually in work. Uffda.

Here's a sneak peak without buttons.

I feel accomplished.

Be excellent to each other!