I’ve never done a contiguous pattern before picking this up. The way the pattern is written kinda bent my brain for a bit until I stopped trying to understand it. Just took it one line at at time and eventually I understood what was going on.

I have decided to make the medium for the shoulders but will increase to just smaller than the large for the bust. I have fairly broad, square shoulders so I was uncertain that the medium would be the right size for me. I measured myself probably 10 times over several days before starting the project until I finally said screw it and trusted in the pattern. So far it looks like the pattern was spot on. The saddle ends right at the highest point of my shoulder, right where it should.

I thought the yarn was a tonal black/grey blend in the skein. Knitted it up it looks more like a midnight blue with flashes of taupe, black and grey. Some of the skeins do look noticeably different now they are caked. Happily they are blending nicely.

11/12/12 The knitting is done, buttons are sewn and it is blocking. The blending of the yarn only really worked with the first two skeins. Once both of them ran out, the next two were significantly darker. Since I did all but the bind off of the body with the first two, I ended up with darker sleeves. Ah well. It’s done. It’s not too terribly noticeable when it is on.

The fit is great. I could have used maybe another half inch in the bust, or placed my buttons a few rows closer to together to make it perfect. I ended up using 10 buttons.