I am improvising the design as I go, based on the skeletal pattern referenced above from The Knitting Fool, Woman’s size 44, Sport Yarn (although this is fingering yarn, with these needles, I get sport gauge).

Here are the stats, feel free to copy if you like, but it’s sketchy at best, and I cannot guarantee accuracy:

Empire Waistband:
Cast on 30 st, 4 rows k2p2, starting and ending K2 on all front side rows, and always knit first and last st to avoid curling.
Find a pattern I like, and knit until the piece is approx. 38” (this will give me some negative ease, and leave space for the button band)
4 more rows K2, P2 across, maintaining edge sts as in the beginning. Bind off.

Sweater top:
Along one long edge, pick up 3 sts for every 4 rows.
Purl back, starting and ending with a knit stitch on all rows. This gave me 212 sts.
On rows 3 and 5, do some evenly spaced increases to the stitch count needed for pattern above, in this case 292. (I had 273 after row 3, and 291 after row 5.)

Knit as per pattern to finish top fronts and back, seaming shoulders when complete.

Sleeves:
Cast on 18, k2, p2 for 3 rows, then work pattern to match waistband and front detail to 9”, finish with 2 rows k2, p2 (as beginning), bind off in pattern.

Pick up along one long edge 3 sts for every 4 rows (I picked up a total of 58 sts, needed 60, so I increased 2 on the first round), join and work in the round (I will sew up the cuff later). On round 2 (all even rounds are increase rounds until I have 102 sts), I increased to 80 sts. On round 4, I increased to 96 stitches; then on the next three even rounds, I added two sts at the underarm (k1, kf&b, k ot last 2 sts, kf&b, k1), until 102 sts.

02/23/10
Aaaargh! Don’t you hate it when you finish a sleeve, thinking all the while, “This seems to be taking longer than it should,” only to find out that it DID take longer than it should, because you added an additional 18 sts to EVERY ROW after the increases, and this made the cap of the sleeve about 20 rows too long because of so friggin’ many decreses to get back to 12 sts? Aaaargh!
Will have to rip that out, but first, I am going on to the second sleeve…sigh!

Now that I have 2 sleeves, both the right size, they set into the armholes very nicely, and the sweater top fits like I want, the “waistband” fits just under my chest.

Collar and “button band”:
So, I was not sure if I wanted buttons or what size (1 large or several tiny), but I plunged into the collar line anyway, picking up one stitch for every stitch of the k2, p2 rib on the waistband, and 3sts for every 4 rows along the v-neck collar area, and knitting the held sts from the sweater back neckline. Not sure how many sts total, but that’s not important.

I maintained the k2, p2 on the button-band area at the waist, and knit 8 or 9 rows garter along all the other stitches. Bind off in pattern on a right side row, there should be 4 garter ridges on fronts of sweater. I noticed there was a seam on the button band area where I picked up stitches, and this bothered me until I decided to make it a design element, and picked up those stitches again to create a tie closure!

“Skirt”:
Using a lace pattern that is a 10-st repeat (plus 1), so I picked up a total of 301 sts (approx. 1 for each row all the way around waistband). Purled back, and started right into the lace pattern, maintaining a 10st garter edge on both sides…these are loooooong rows! At the end of the lace section, I knit 14 or 16 (?) rows straight garter, then bound off in knit. Soaked, blocked and tadaaaaa!