01/03/08 - Finished!

28/02/08 - so close! Finally at the point of trying on - my circs are too short to fit around me. The neckline is exactly how I wanted it to be. Yay! However… while the back is just the right length, the front is a little short. Can’t decide whether to cast off now or do another inch and risk the back being too long.

10/02/08 - sleeves are finished! Pretty bored of knitting but… ok. I’ll continue. Calculations regarding the avoidance of nastiness feared below have led me to cast on 50 sts, pick up 8 stitches for each front side, and 98 across the back. That’s 164 stitches all the way round, should give me a nice low and wide neckline and not bunch the back up too much. Fingers crossed.

So far, only alterations I’ve made are that I’ve changed the sleeve(s) a bit. They weren’t as snug around my upper arm as I’d have liked, which would mean that increasing those stitches around the elbow would leave with with tiny doll-hands poking out of cavernous wizard’s sleeves.

Not a pleasant image.

So I’ve knitted along happily for 8” with the intended number of stitches, but from then on I’ve decreased by one stitch every 1.5” until I’ve ended up with 46 stitches. I think. Then another 5 rows straight and cast off. Seems to be ok… hope adding the body doesn’t skew things too much.

I’ve been perusing the project gallery for this and I’ve seen:

• drooping necklines
• narrow, high necklines
• crumpled backs
• dodgy sides

(all things pointed out by the creators themselves, not me being mean). There’s only a couple that really look like the original, or at least how I would like mine to look. The pattern says the front should be 8” wide, which is rubbish. It’s going to have to be 10” or it’ll sag and bag and be quite un-Tudor - if that’s too wide I can more easily tweak inwards than outwards. This is going to need some serious calculation time.