I usually knit one piece, pullover sweaters. The kind that don’t need all kinds of little doo-dads to finish up. You cast off, weave in the ends, block (if I feel like being good), and bam! Instant sweater.

It just so happens that both of the projects currently on the needles are a little more complicated than this. Both are cardigan style, one is pieced. One needs a zipper, and the other needs buttons.

The lace sweater has been finished for a while now, except for that critical part where I go out and buy buttons. Here’s a terrible picture to give you an idea of where it stands:

Sorry for the backlighting; unfortunately it’s all or nothing with light lately, and I decided that I’d take what I could get.

This weekend, we finally made it out to look for buttons, in a marathon errands-running session on Saturday. I have a couple of options that I think will work, and now just need to sit down and sew them on, and attach the grosgrain ribbon button band reinforcement.

In our travels, I also picked up some of these:

I had never seen them before, but two people in my knitting/spinning circle have been using them lately, and they swear by them. They’re little plastic bobbins, and you can wrap a few yards of yarn inside to keep things tidy while doing intarsia. Unfortunately, this weekend was too late for them to be helpful on this project:

But now I have a set for next time I am inclined to work with lots of tangly ends. (All things considered, though, I found it very easy to work with the intarsia ends wound as small skeins. As long as I kept an eye on them, they were beautifully behaved.)

Here’s the back:

We also picked up a zipper for this one, and I’m looking forward to my first ever full-front steek and zipper install in the near future. I’ll probably finish the sleeves first, though.

I’m also realizing that I need to start planning my holiday travel knitting. The sweater came with me to Florida a couple of weekends ago while we visited Branden’s grandmother, and I can probably take along a sleeve or two when we go back to Massachusetts late next week. But I’m thinking I’ll need a couple of other projects on the needles, too. Our yarn shop mission on Saturday was also partly a yarn scouting tour for another project I have in mind, but I didn’t find quite what I was looking for. I know where to order it online, though, so I might get it in time to take with us.

Other than that, I think a stash toss is in order, to see what might be hanging around in there that just needs to be cast on next.