Overthinking Einstein

I have come to my senses. I am going to return the beautiful, sophisticated and costly buttons. Instead, I found some larger, funky buttons that cost a fraction of the price and will also look great. While I love the first buttons, I have to admit - I'm more funky than sophisticated. Plus the funky price is much better.

In the meantime I am overthinking this "simple" Einstein Coat. I did a Ravelry search and examined most of the coats listed on the site. I paid particular attention to those with big buttons, because I'm now having a buttonhole crisis. None of the other knitters addressed buttonholes so they clearly did not have the concerns I have. It must be my tendency toward perfectionism which is causing me a major headache.

Sally Melville has the knitter make a simple yarn-over button hole on the coat. However, when I saw the results of this button hole on several coats at my LYS I realized it is way too small, as well as hard to locate, for my taste. Since I have my big buttons, I've been experimenting with various sizes of the one row buttonhole. Even though my buttons are 1 1/2 inches I have found that a 2 stitch button hole is all I need. The buttonholes on the lower part of the coat are veritcal, and they look fine. The buttonholes on the top will be horizontal and they are gaping a bit. It appears that the weight of the knitting pulls them apart.

Will I be able to live with this?

I continued to experiment. In Nancy Wiseman's The Knitter's Book of Finishing Techniques, I found directions for a larger yarn-over buttonhole. It fits my buttons rather snugly, but it really gaps. It's a large hole as a matter of fact, and I can't live with it.

Now I'm back to my 2 stitch one-row buttonhole. I've complete four and am moving on.

Most Ravelry knitters who completed the Einstein Coat reported that it was an easy pattern. I too, thought it was an easy pattern, until I started mucking with it. Trying to improve what is already a beautiful pattern is just plain crazy.