First mod: doing seed stitch instead of garter rib for the edging because reasons.

Second mod: I got gauge, but I was really worried about the fact that everything was knitting up a lot longer than it was supposed to - and then most of the way through the sleeves (patterned at 4.75” long), I did the calculations:

10 cuff + 4x4 incr + 4x6 incr = 50 rows

50 rows/9 rpi = 5.5 inches

So. Gonna do some modifications. I’ve done 2 full long increases (and I’m doing the sleeves two at a time), so the next two increases are going to be two-row increases (k1,m1,k to last st,m1,k1)+(p across). I wish I’d noticed this a little sooner and I would have just done this:

10 cuff + 7x4 incr + 1x6 incr = 44 rows

44 rows/9 rpi = 4.9 inches

which is much closer to the proper length and a lot less weirdly shaped than what I’m going to be doing.

Third mod: for the collar, instead of knitting around after I finished the final lace repeat, I did the first round of the lace repeat again, omitting all YOs and including the raglan decreases. I worked only 5 rows of the collar, all in seed stitch, and decreased only twice (at the back raglan decrease points) on the second row, but I did a sl-k2tog-psso decrease for a total of four decreased stitches on that row and 20 decreased stitches total.

Final mod: did a crochet chain stitch embroidery around the leaves so they’d look more like leaves. Honestly now they kind of look more like dragon scales. I have zero problem with this.

And gifted! Apparently the mother is a veteranarian, so the puppy buttons were a great call! Too bad I couldn’t find some kind of DNA cable pattern to tie in with the father’s research, but meh, one out of two ain’t bad :)