I’ll blog about this at line4line.blogspot.com…

June 7: It seems I used almost exactly 6 skeins of Shibui Staccato (very slightly less) which is 400 yards less yarn than the 1547 yards that the pattern calls for. I think the pattern inflates the need for yarn quite a bit. And I went down a needle size to get gauge!

Technical Details:

I knit the body to 10 inches from underarm, not 11.75, as instructed. This thing would be very long, between yarn drape, stretching on wear/post blocking at almost 12 inches. Unless you’re notably long in the waist, consider shortening this.

Furthermore, the fit on this is very forgiving. I made the 32.5 and wish I’d made the 30.5. I have narrow shoulders, short waist, small frame but proportionately large breasts (38”) and I think the 30.5 would fit fine in the bust.

Sleeves: Sara suggested that the sleeves on this sweater run loose so I decided to decrease from 70 stitches (the starting off point on the size 32.5) to 64 stitches over the first 7 rounds - 2 stitches on round 3, 2 on round 5 and 2 on round 7. Also decided to do the decrease row every 6th round (except for the first 2 decreases, after round 7, which fell on rounds 14 and 21. Note: For those I maintained the decrease round, as per pattern instructions, on the 7th round). I did this to make the sleeves smaller faster. Partly this is because my upper arms are fairly compact but also because I wanted the final sleeve to be about an inch shorter than the pattern calls for. Update: I lengthened the final sleeve by an inch at the end (at 44 stitches) by doing an additional 8 rounds. I wanted a bracelet length sleeve, I decided. So it’s more or less the sleeve length that the pattern calls for… I also did 4 rounds of rib at the end, before bind off. Even that seems paltry, but the pattern only calls for 2 rounds?! Don’t know how the fabric will keep from curling with only 2 rounds…

Short Rows:I switched up the short rows to ensure that the cardi front is less long than the pattern instructions would make it.

So, for left front shaping:
Short row 1 - 1 x, WT, work WS back to start (10 st from centre back)
Short row 2 - 1x, WT, work WS back to start (8 stitches from wrapped stitch in row 1)
Short row 3 - 24x (6 stitches from wrapped stitch in row 2 and then 6 stitches from every previous wrapped stitch for 24 repeats)