I’m modeling until I can get a picture of Tristyn wearing this unisex pullover. The sleeves will be full length on him.

Extremely cute pattern. Extremely confusing instructions - at least the ones in English. Please see my comments about pattern clarification at the bottom of this Notes section. In all fairness, someone went to GREAT lengths to try and cover every detail, but many people, myself included are confused by a lot of the directions. I believe that the designer is French, so I do appreciate that she at least gave us an inkling of what we should do. People are actually creating nice sweaters that look similar to her model.

This is knit in the round from the bottom up to the armpits. Then you knit the sleeves and join them to the body on one long, circular needle. Then the yoke is knit in one piece up to the neckline with raglan decreasing. Seamless and a beautiful design. My favorite kind of pullover.

Using one size larger needle since Tristyn is a bit larger than a size 12. Place markers every 12 sts on the front which is the stitch pattern repeat. Used size 7 US needle for everything but the ribbing at neck which was done with size 6 US needle.

Knitting with 2 strands of yarn held together. The pattern calls for worsted weight, so needed both yarns to achieve this. It adds to the color interest as well.

Pattern says to do the T2R and T2L stitches like this. I did the T2R as such, but found this T2L method much too awkward. I did the T2L as a regular cable stitch, but without cable needle. Looks flatter and nicer too.

I liked knitting with the Stylecraft yarn. However, I’m giving it a low rating because all of the balls had joins and one of them had 5 joins/breaks in it!! The Woolike yarn has 678 yards per ball and not a single join in any I’ve used so far. Wish that the Woolike came in more colors.

SIZE 12 Instruction clarification:

Everything was simple as pie until I got to the armpits. Chart D2 is what really thru me for a loop - especially the “18” stitches at the top of the chart. After knitting Chart D1 (with indicated number of rows), all we’re really doing is putting 8 sts on holders (4 from front and 4 from back) under each armpit. Then the next 14 rounds have no raglan decreases. To put it simply, these 14 rounds are just knit straight up, after attaching both sleeves on the 1st round and following Chart D1 where we left off (minus the underarm sts on holders). Back and sleeves are all stockinette st. The instructions could have just stated this and added, “Be sure to start and end each row of the FRONT with a KNIT stitch for the next 14 rounds.” And being sure to retain the integrity of Chart D1 as you proceed upwards.

Chart D2 should have a been split down the middle and separated. The right half of the chart basically shows how you start each of the 14 rows on the FRONT - starting with the 1st round where the sleeves are attached. And the left half of Chart D2 is just showing how you end each of the rows on the FRONT only. For the rest of the front, you could just follow Chart D1. (The only purpose of Chart D2 is to compensate for the missing FRONT armpit sts which are now on holders. However, I believe that this chart is far more confusing than it is helpful. It’s basically Chart D1 minus the armpit sts.)

At the point where you join the sleeves to the body, the pattern states that there are a total of 5 markers. Just to clarify, the locations of these are (just guessing):

1st marker - New start of round which is approximately in the middle of whichever sleeve you attach first. The pattern says to attach the RIGHT sleeve first, but I attached the LEFT sleeve first. Why? Because I knit the front of the sweater before the back on all the previous rounds, so why change the order now? It probably doesn’t make any difference, but I thought it was odd to change the starting point of rounds to the opposite side of the sweater at this point. Perhaps it has something to do with the shoulder opening which I’m not doing.

2nd and 3rd markers - These are on each side of the front and separate front from sleeves.

4th and 5th markers - These are on each side of the back and separate back from sleeves.

YOKE section, page 4. We prepare for raglan decreasing. Suddenly the stitch count for front and back go from 66 (each) to 64. But there have not been any raglan decreases at this point. Therefore, I’m ASSUMING that 4 more markers are to be added to those already existing. So I put 2 more markers in front and 2 more in back so that there are 64 sts between front and back markers. Now I have TWO markers at each of the 4 raglan lines. There is ONE stitch between these markers. You can never have too many markers! At any rate, I’m not going to miss any of my “framed” raglan stitches. I assume these are to be the “center” stitches for the CDD? Perhaps I’m way off track here, but this is what I mean by “confusing”.

Next time I knit this sweater, I’ll do the CDD decreasing. However, I saw “purl thru the back loop in the cable stitch” was involved at times, in addition to other things that required lots of reading and concentration. (Also I had marker confusion.) This time I did ithe raglan decreasing the following way (every other ODD numbered round, 11 times):

1st decrease at left front: K2tog, Knit the framed st between markers, P2tog

2nd decrease at right front: P2tog, Knit the framed st, SKP
(Occasionally I would do something a little different for the front decreases, depending on what kind of stitches were at the beginning and end of the front.)

3rd decrease at right back: K2tog, SKP

4th decrease at left back: K2tog, SKP
(SKP = Slip knitwise, K1, Pass the slipped st over)

I eliminated the shoulder button detail just because my other half said that it would not be necessary for a 12-year-old boy and that he thought it to be a bit of a “feminine” detail. Using a stretchy bind-off for the neck ribbing instead. The shoulder tab is definitely a good idea for younger children and babies who tend to have larger heads in proportion to their body size.

I do my short rows like Carol Sunday. This is the same as Japanese short rows except that we use thread as holders.

At this point, I abandoned the pattern instructions, since I could not make any sense of them. Following is what I did starting mid-way down on page 6 of the pattern (start of SHORT ROWS):

Before starting short rows, I had the exact number of sts on my needles as stated in the pattern for size 12:

42 sts between front markers
42 sts between back markers
22 sts between right sleeve markers
22 sts between left sleeve markers
4 sts total between raglan decrease markers
Equals 132 sts on one long circular needle

I tried the sweater on at this point and all measurements were as they should be. Front neckline was exactly where it needed to stay. Back neck needed to come up about 2.625 inches. I put in a lifeline since I was winging it from this point on.

I put 16 center front sts on a holder. I was at center of left shoulder at this point which was the start/end of all my rounds. I continued this RS ROW until 13 sts into the front diamond chart design (left side of front). Then I turned my work (without wrapping since I do “Sunday Short Rows”). Purl or Knit (in pattern) for next WS row until I got to the last st which was 13 sts into the front diamond pattern chart (right side of front). There were no raglan decreases on WS short rows. Only did raglan decreases on RS short rows or every other row. In addition to the RS raglan decreasing, I just knit everything in pattern as I came to it. I did the first couple of turns 2 sts from the previous turns and after that I turned 1 st after every previous turn. Toward the end of the short rows, I got to the front raglan decreases and that’s approximately where the short rows ended.

I think I did about 26 short rows or until the back measured 2.625 inches higher. When I had the following number of sts on my needles, I stopped doing the short rows:

26 sts between back markers
7 sts between right sleeve markers
7 sts between left sleeve markers
16 sts held in center front (no knitting during short rows)
8 sts on right side front (knitted during short rows)
8 sts on left side front (knitted during short rows)
4 sts total between raglan decrease markers
Equals 76 sts total

At this point, I did one additional RS ROUND (all the way around the neck), picking up my short row “wraps” (yarn held on thread) as I went around (no decreasing).

I switched to a smaller needle (size 6 US) and did 6 rounds of K2, P2 rib to finish the neckline. Before starting the ribbing, take a look at the neckline and plan where the 2 knit sts will fall. I planned mine to be exactly at the center front and this also (fortunately) allowed for some continuation of the diamond pattern knit stitches up into the ribbing. Having the stitch pattern flow into the ribbing always adds a professional looking touch to any garment.

Bound off using Jeny’s Surprisingly Stretchy Bind-Off in pattern. This is more than stretchy enough to pull on over the head without any shoulder opening. Looks very neat and hugs the neck nicely.

Such a cute sweater and it turned out to be a quick and easy project doing it my own way. This pullover would fit me perfectly if I added 3 inches in length to the sleeves. As I always say, “Everything is easy when you know how.”