1 year later: Now that I have more experience with shaping (thanks, new sewing hobby), if I were to make this again, I’d probably have used a starter size closer to my upper bust + 2”, as my bust size is larger than “average” compared to the rest of my measurement, apparently. Then I could’ve done shaping for the bust, waist, and hips. As it is, this is a little large at the shoulders and armpits.

Also, I should make hip shaping more gradual toward the bottom - it makes sense if you think about it for a moment, but I end up with this unflattering flare if I make linear increases which stop abruptly at the ribbing.

40 hr estimate
XL. (~46” bust.) Decrease to ~35” waist. Inc to 50” hip. Need height measurements.
Swatched, blocked it, and hung it up with teeny weights. Got a gauge of 22/26.

After knitting to underarms and blocking, actual sweater gauge comes out to be appx 22/34.
Shaping:
Bust-waist: Starting 22 rows after joining both sleeves:

• round 1: dec 1 st at side backs (2 st dec)
• round 2: dec 1 st at side fronts (2 st dec)
• rounds 3-4: repeat rnds 1 & 2
• round 5: knit around in pattern
• repeat above 5 rounds 6 more times. Then repeat rounds 1-3. Then knit 2 more rounds in pattern. (62 sts decreased over 40 rows)

Waist: knit 9 rounds in pattern

Waist-hip:

• Round 1: inc at side fronts (2 st inc)
• Round 2: inc at side backs (2 st inc)
• Repeat rnds 1&2 20 more times. (84 sts across 42 rows)

First hank 102g, then 100g, 99g, 97g, 98g, 97g, 96g.

Dec 27 - 4h20m. 2 rows into the cable charts.
Dec 28 - 1h30m. Sleeve cap section. Total 5h50m.
Dec 29 - 3h30m. About 60% of the way through the sleeve cap section. Definitely not finishing this in 30 hours. Estimate 70 hrs? Total 9h20m.
Dec 30 - 1h10m. Finished with first hank. Total 10h30m.
Dec 31 - 3h50m. Halfway through the armhole section. Total 14h20m.
Jan 1 - 2h50m. Finished armhole section and second hank. Total 17h10m.
Jan 2 - 1h35m. Total 18h45m.
Jan 3 - 1h5m. Total 19h50m.
Jan 4 - 2h10m. Total 22h.
Jan 8 - 30 mins. Starting ribbing at the sleeve cuff. Total 22h30m.
Jan 9 - 1h35m. Completely done with one sleeve. Total 24h5m.
Jan 11 - 1h30m. Nearly done with first set of sleeve decreases. Finished 3rd hank. Total 25h35m.
Jan 12 - 45 mins. Total 26h20m.
Jan 13 - 1h40m. Total 28h.
Jan 14 - 35 mins. Done with sleeve decreases. Total 28h35m.
Jan 15 - 3h5m. Completely finished with both sleeves, and a few more rounds into the body of the sweater. Need to start decreasing for waist soon. Total 31h40m.
Jan 16 - 55m. Total 32h35m.
Jan 18 - 1h45m. Almost to waist shaping. Should end up with an extra ~40g of yarn or so left over. Total 34h20m.
Jan 20 - 1h30m. Total 35h50m.
Jan 21 - 4h. Total 39h50m.
Jan 22 - 2h5m. Attached 6th hank. Done with waist shaping. Total 41h55m.
Jan 23 - 2h40m. Done with the waist, and 1/3 of the way through hip shaping. My row gauge appears to be every so slightly larger (understandable as it gets heavier), so I shortened the waist section to only 3 rows, down from its planned 9 rows. Also, slowed the hip increases to mirror the waist decreases… partly because I’m running low on yarn, and partly because I don’t think I need that much ease. Total 44h35m.
Jan 25 - 20 mins. Total 44h55m.
Jan 26 - 40 mins. Total 45h35m.
Jan 29 - 1h20m. Attached final skein. Total 46h55m.
Jan 30 - 1h25m. Total 48h20m.
Feb 1 - 25m. Total 48h45m.
Feb 3 - 1h35m. Halfway done with waist band. Total 50h20m.
Feb 4 - 3h10m. All done! Only 12g left on my last skein. This sweater is way heavier than I thought a DK sweater would be for some reason, but that’s kind of nice. This yarn is a bit heavier (by ~50%) than say, a standard superwash merino DK. It’s super warm! Total 53h30m.