Buttonholes and their location

Now that the ribbing is done and the cardigan border continues and the pattern rows are established (the top three rows next to the needle, though you can't really see them in this picture), the next thing I need to think about as I work my way up the sweater is buttonholes.

I put the recommended two button in the bottom ribbing, one a half inch after the cast on and one a half inch before the ribbing stops. This ribbing is right at 3 inches deep, and the desired depth to the underarm is 15 inches. If you take the ribbing depth off, that leave 12 inches and four buttons, so one button hole every three inches.

From here up the underarms, this is fairly mindless knitting - only the patterns and the buttonholes to keep track of.



Now, there are several stitch markers there. The red one is keeping the cardigan border stitches isolated, and the two lockable ones are marking button holes. I decided that since this sweater is going to be worn open most of the time, that I wanted the buttonholes to be as unobtrusive as possible. So I'm using simple YO, K2T holes instead of a fancy slot type buttonhole. They are plenty big enough for when I want to button the sweater up, but disappear into the cardigan border ribbing when not in use.

Buttons left unbuttoned are decorative, but empty buttonholes are just empty.....

And just like I want them to, they disappear - hence the markers.