I just finished my first pair of socks (whee!) and wasn’t sure what I wanted to knit next. I had planned on a (different) sweater but was mentally looking for something a bit less involved first. This one seemed like a good bet!

27 February
Swatching. (Bottom pic.) Pre-blocking it was spot on. Let’s see what wet blocking does… Seems to change it very little. Getting a tad over 9 rows for 2” instead of the previous 10 but stitches seem spot on when unstretched. Time to cast on!

01 March
Oh my! I’m almost done with the first ball of yarn!

02 March
And now I’m done with the second ball! This is going amazingly fast. I’m so used to using much smaller needles.

08 March
I ended up taking about three days off due to accidentally poisoning myself with corn (I’m allergic). Oops. Otherwise this is going super-fast; I’m about to start my 4th yarn ball!

The fit is a bit looser than the photo (second from the bottom) indicates since I didn’t move it off of the 32” circ to let it spread out. So far, it seems to fit perfectly!

11 March
Binding off the bottom at the end of the 4th ball of yarn! I’m using the Icelandic Bind Off (from Cast On, Bind Off p124) and I love how it looks with the garter stitch edging!

14 March
Working on the sleeves. After that, I’m going to go back and lengthen the body a bit - it’s too short and hits right at the most unflattering spot on me. (Third pic from bottom.)

19 March
So the sleeves are almost done and it looks like the yarn balls I’m using for them will run out half an inch before the sleeves are full length. Which means my last ball of yarn will be responsible for: lengthening the body, knitting the collar and adding the last little bit of length on the sleeves. I should end this project with zero leftover yarn!

22 March
BLOCKING! I haven’t woven in the ends yet because I’m a little afraid that the sweater will stretch after blocking and I’ll need to rip back and shorten the sleeves or something. We shall see!

I’ve purchased some buttons so hopefully those will work when they come in next week. I can use the leftover yard and a half of yarn to sew hem on!

24 March
All dry! It did lengthen a bit but it was so minimal that it just makes the length more perfect. Now, to sew in the ends and wait for the buttons.

01 April
I GOT MY BUTTONS! And it was late, but I finally found the time to put them on and yay! They are delightful! I love my new sweater!

Minus the button wait, it took me just under a month to knit this. A lot faster than the four months it took me to make my first sweater! (Though Aran vs. Fingering might have a lot to do with that!)

Modification(s):
Bust-wise, I match up with the small but my upper arms are bigger so I repeated the raglan increases three more times to get a better fit. That gave me 42 sleeve stitches plus whatever I cast on with later. I probably could have gone with one less set of increases diameter-wise but the arm hole ended rather high so it would have cut into my armpit without those extra rows.

For the body stitches, doing more increases gave me 132 stitches when I separated the sleeves. On the next RS row, I decreased twice under each arm to get to 128. I decided to not decrease any more but to instead skip the first set of increases. I did the three other sets increases as scheduled.

I lengthened the body to a bit over 13” from the arm.

For the arms, I added an extra decrease pair at the elbow and then another midway down my forearm. I also made the sleeves full length.

I also did two sets of matched decreases on the last rows of the collar so the back wouldn’t poke up.