Lion Brand was having a promotion of 4 balls for $10!

The pattern calls for 17.5 sts = 4in
The side seam sounded quite short and the sleeves were actually longer than the sweater. I like short sweaters (I am short) but not cropped. But I don’t like long sleeves. I decided to measure a couple of handmade sweaters that I liked how they fit. (Love Note, Starfall, Stopover)
I have decided to shorten the sleeves .5in and I am keeping the body length the same.
I tried the sweater on after splitting for hem and have decided to shorten .5in, so I have to take out to .5in above where I split for hem.
2/7 Sleeve, the last decrease ended at the end of a stripe, it was 10.5in so I decided to stop there instead of changing color and knitting to 11.5 like the pattern said for my size. I changed color, knit 1 rnd working decreases and worked ribbing for 16rnds, 2in, then finished sleeve according to directions.
I decided that the body is still too long and will shorten it by undoing the whole last stripe.
2/8 My side seem was going to be really short, so I measured my row gauge which was 26 instead of 28. Therefore my yoke was a lot deeper than it was supposed to be (but when I measured after the last increase it seemed to be the right depth). If I make the sweater out of the same yarn, I will decrease the number of rows between increase rounds.
2/9 The total width was about 42 instead of 44.75, but that was expected since my gauge was a little tighter.