Butterflies! (?)

One of the reasons I wanted to start blogging was that I thought it might help me finish my projects. Many of us have the bad habit of doing the knitting, but failing to finish our projects because we dislike seaming or weaving in ends. I have this bad habit.

Unfortunately, I have the further bad habit of finally getting around to the seaming and end-weaving, only to further procrastinate by failing to sew on the buttons. I don't know what it is -- I like buttons, and I like applying them. I guess I just like knitting better, and there's always another project to be started. My "blogging will help me finish my knitting theory" was that perhaps the shame of blogging the beginning, middle, and nearly-end of a project but not the end-end of the project would just be too strong to be denied.

So far, so good. Because the Papillon Pullover from Bouton d'Or layette & junior HS n° 14 is done, done, done! Note the (previously-missing) armhole shaping:














And the wee, lonely button on the back (yes, this is actually sewn on, not just strategically positioned for the photo . . .):














Setting aside the armhole fiasco (which I don't suppose I can properly blame on the pattern), I really enjoyed this one. It is a fairly simple knit, and a lovely stitch. Mainly YOs, SSKs, and K2togs, with one tiny instance per pattern unit of cabling. I guess the pattern is supposed to be butterflies (Papillon?), but I think it is abstract enough to be gender-neutral enough to satisfy a certain parent-to-be who cares about that sort of thing. (If the kid turns out to be a boy, daddy will never know these things are butterflies. I'm certainly not telling. Right? Right.)

The pattern is well thought out, and the chart accurate. I only noticed one potential pitfall: The knitter is told to knit the front the same as the back up to the beginning of the front's neck shaping. Assuming the knitter follows the pattern precisely, the knitter will have included armhole shaping on the front, but will also have included the beginnings of a placket. That would be wrong. But the pattern does not actually say 'knit front same as back until x point, leaving out placket.' Yes, it would be pretty obviously wrong (so hopefully no one would actually do this). But so would forgetting the armholes.