EZ February Baby Sweater

[wildflower38]

This is the first sweater I ever done and I'm not making the sweater for anyone.... its practice for the sweaters I want t make for myself. After 2.5 years of knitting its about time I made a sweater.

I have question about where do I put the buttonholes for this sweater. A a copy of this pattern in a Vogue Knitting book and it has: Work buttonholes one stitch in from one front edge by yo, k2tog and placing them as follows: The first one after 1 ridge(2rows) and the others about every 8th ridge(16 rows). When I do the yo k2tog after the first stitch in a buttonhole row the edge looks sloppy. Can I put the buttonholes in after 2 stitches? The edges of the sweater are 4 stitches long and done in garter stitch. Does anyone have suggestion for a different buttonhole method that won't look wonky?

[MerigoldinWA]

Yes, I think you could put the buttonhole in 2 stitches from the edge. You could do a simple 2 row buttonhole too, instead. For that you would BO 1 or 2 and then CO the same number of stitches in the same place on the next row. Do a sample on a small swatch to see what looks good, and makes a buttonhole the size you will want for your buttons.

I have been known to leave the self buttonband off of a sweater like this and then pick up stitches and add bands knit on. Since you are not making this for anyone in particlar doing them by the "ridge" might be all right. I usually like to have more control about the length I'm going to turn out with and want the buttonholes to be placed a proper distance apart over the length I actually knit to (row gauge can be different than the designer's). I also took a finishing class from Chris Bylsma and she felt that bands that were added gave a garment more stability (which is not that important anyhow on a baby sweater though). If you did want to leave them off and add buttonbands just subtract those 4 stitches from each front and keep the change in mind with any other numbers you have to consider in the directions.