What could be better than a new pair of shoes?

The answer is: a new pair of shoes and a coordinating sweater, and that is what I spent a lot of my Monday working on.

I had finished the pleated skirt and the bodice of an Eloise inspired crochet sweater, but I still had to crochet the sleeves, and for reasons I still don’t understand, the sleeves took forever. By mid-afternoon, however, I had finished crocheting the sleeves, and the sweater was almost—but not quite—ready for adventure:

Today, I worked on bridging that gap between “almost” and “not quite” done.

The first order of business was the easiest: weave in the ends and trim them. Then I got to the next step: sew buttons onto the sweater.

Three years ago when I still lived in Raleigh, North Carolina, I had all of my crafting materials at the ready. I would have had no trouble finding hundreds of buttons to sort through. In fact, the problem would not have been finding the buttons, it would have been choosing which ones to use.

Today, however, with a move that took eighteen months to complete behind me, I quickly discovered that the only buttons I could find quickly were the buttons on the clothes I currently wear. My mom, however, had a small stash of buttons that she had kept within easy reach, and soon enough I had two buttons that would do just fine, so I got out my embroidery thread, found the perfect shade of pink, and soon the buttons were secured.

The last order of business was to block the now very nearly completed sweater:

But after I took this photo, I realized that I had forgotten one thing. The entire reason I had crocheted the sweater was to have something that would coordinate with a pair of shoes I had purchased.

So I took one more photo:

and the sweater coordinates perfectly with the shoes!

And this ability to bring together disparate things and make them into a coherent and very fun whole is why I will always love crochet.