Notes and thoughts for next time:

• LOVE this pattern! Very flattering, great fit, beautiful and classic design.

• use a 32” needle not 24”. I did mine on a 24” needle all the way to the waist decreases (so most of the sweater) and when it came time to the hip increases I decided to switch. Should have done that sooner, like after the yoke chart!

• This yarn is amazing and I would 100% use it again.

• Keep the yarn floats really loose in the colourwork part, especially the last bit with the loops.

• I shortened the body by one repeat

• I skipped the buttonholes, and knit 10 rounds of garter stitch for the trim, ending on a purl, then bound off knitwise. The trim is knit all around the entire sweater, front-neck-otherfront-hem. I used a 24” cable connected to a 32” cable to do the binding. The rounded corners look really nice.

• I am going to sew ribbon and snaps to the front opening, with buttons sitting on top.

• I made size 32 and I am about a 32-33” bust, 26” waist, 38” hip depending on weight fluctuations.

Yarn left over - I have lots and will weigh it and update my notes.

4/24 cast on. Deciding between size 32 and 34 but the yoke is the same for both so I can decide after knitting the yoke part. (Thinking probably 32, as my Lauriel was 34 and that ended up quite large.)

Main - orange
background - white
birds - turquoise
loops - plum

For the row with three colours I am stopping after every single stitch of main colour, and readjusting the floats over the three stitches of yoke background colour. Loosen both colours as its easy to pull the loop colour too tight. Notes to self for future versions! It’s slow going but loosening the floats each time is keeping my work flat without puckers.

4/26 finished yoke, short rows and started left sleeve. It feels strange to be knitting a sleeve before the body! I’m sure there is a reason so I’m following the instructions.

4/27 Nearly finished the first sleeve. The great part about this yarn is the huge balls, I’m still on my first ball of main colour!

4/29 Finished the first sleeve and started the second sleeve. I didn’t keep the body stitches on the needles, I moved them to scrap yarn while knitting the sleeves. (Because I was doing magic loop and used the same needles for both sleeve and body.)

5/2 finished second sleeve yay! Had small ball of first skein left but started the second skein for the body.

LOVE these huge skeins - there will hardly be any ends to work in, and I’m going to get a long sleeve sweater out of less than 2 skeins. Nice!

5/4 started the decreases on the body. This is going pretty quick and I love how it’s looking so far.

5/7 on to the hip increases! I’m going to have a ton of orange yarn left. What to do, make a hat to match? :) Gloves maybe, might actually be cute if they matched, with a little bird across the tops of the mittens.

5/8 finished body, started edging. Did one less increase for a slightly shorter sweater. Picked up 73 sts down front opening.
For the edging I attached a 24” cord to the 32” cord so it would be long enough otherwise it’s really bunched up. Basically, you knit the edging around the entire sweater at the end - the neck, down the front, along the hem, up the other front - and make cute rounded corners at the corner turns. It takes forever to knit one round but I have a good feeling about how it’s going to look!

5/10 knit 10 rounds of binding, skipped buttonholes, bound off. (The bind off takes forever, or I am slow, but it took over an hour just to bind off and I didn’t do anything fancy! 45 minutes at knit night and probably about 15 min at home to finish it off.)

LOVE this sweater! Because of the darts the fit is perfect and hugs curves, without looking bumpy at the sides. Just have to sew on ribbon, snaps and buttons and we’re all done!

6/7 finally got buttons. wow that took a long time! Now to sew them on and take photos..

………….

notes for next time:
also want to make a grey and white two-colour version. Or, grey and white and yellow using leftover ‘gilded’ yarn..Or something using leftover olive and yellow as detail colours, white yoke and.. green for main colour? (plus i will have leftover plum, turquoise from this sweater, and the light purple I bought that looked different on screen..) So many possibilities for this pattern!
Colour ideas:
Olive, yellow loops, white background, plum birds
Taupe, brown loops, white background, brown birds
Maroon, turq loops, white background, turquoise birds