I live in the heart of Dutch American culture in northwest Iowa.

My swatch is 5.5 stitches/inch and 7 rounds/inch knit in the round, washed and blocked. I am knitting a size medium with intentions to add two inches of short rows in the bust area. This should be accomplished before the color work starts.

To balance out the heavy top with color work, I chose to knit the first five rows of Chart B (the orange arrows) after knitting the braid. It makes just under an inch of detail at the bottom of the sweater.

10/26/11 Haven’t touched it in weeks. I knit waist decreases/increases and then added in my two inches of short row shaping. I am about to set the body aside to knit the sleeves. But I didn’t want to do that until I tried it on. In fear of it not fitting the way I wanted, I held off actually trying it on. It rested in the yarn lair for these weeks.

Tried it on last night and the bust shaping and waist shaping are amazing. It fits very well in the front. The back it was a little hard to tell if it is too big or if it was just the wonky cables from the extra needle I slid half the stitches on to. It appears it might be an inch or so of positive ease -- which will be OK as I intend to wear a shirt under it.

Going forward with knitting the sleeves. After I attach the sleeves I will adjust and possibly increase the rate of decreases so it fits my back shoulders more closely. And after it is done, I may just take scissors to it, and increase the shaping by inserting additional darts in the back to make it fit the way I want.

08/07/12 So this sat for several months while I debated what to do. In the end I frogged to below the waist decreases. I figured the math and my stitch gauge is 4 % larger than called for. I moved the waist decreases to be in the front and the back and recalculated how many decreases I needed to have (with my 4% larger than called for gauge) and where to put them on the front and the back. I needed a fairly steep decrease (eight stitches/row for a total of some 40 stitches to get to the appropriate waist size. I recalculated the waist increases to they would put me at a size small, instead of a size medium in stitch count (with the 4% increase). I plan to knit about 1.5 straight before putting in two inches of short-row bust shaping and finishing the length off before putting the body aside to knit sleeves.

I’m still operating under the dream of finishing this by NCFF which is Sept. 15. I will be doing some heavy knitting to make it happen.

08/12/12 I finished knitting the three inches of shortrows for the bust (20 rows over 20 stitches). I knit an additional inch of fabric and have set the body aside to knit the sleeves. My goal is to take good notes and knit them one at a time. I intend to finish the sleeves in a week. I am also thinking I will have to increase the size of the sleeves to accommodate my muscular biceps -- looking like a size large (or so) will be necessary.

08/26/12 Finished the sleeves and attached them to the body. It is a bit bulk to deal with right now. But I will tuck the sleeves in the body when we get a little further along.

08/28/12 Got through row 24 of Chart A in the color work, thanks to knitting in the car during a four hour ride to and from a funeral. Of course I also knit a row and then had to tink back because I did it wrong.

Since my row gauge is 7 rows to an inch instead of 9 rows to an inch, I will cutting out a few sections of chart to make it work. I took out two rows of white and blue stripes so instead of five stripes, there are three. I will decrease the number of braids and the eliminate one or possibly two charts in their entirety (especially that row that triangle set that is three colors.

09/01/12 Finished knitting.
09/02/12 Blocked this bad boy.
09/09/12 Cut the steek. I threaded some smooth waist yarn up the stitch I was cutting, and also where the steek was going to be folded back. Then I took my brand new Gingher scissors to my knitting and snipped it. I then immediately took it to my sewing machine and stitched two rows of stitches down each side. I pressed back the steek and picked up and knit the button bands. I also tacked down the edges of the facing. By the end of the night the button bands were knit, the places to attach the buttons were marked and the facings were all tacked down.
09/10/12 Left work early so I could get buttons. I had to make a special trip to get it done, but I rounded up a lovely gold toned button. I spent knit night sewing on 10 of the 15 buttons. To help reinforce the buttons, I sewed a clear button on the back side of the fabric to help with pulling. I am glad I did that, because it makes it rather sturdy.
09/11/12 Finished sewing the final five buttons on, and tried on the sweater. It fits great. but it did grow a bit in length after blocking. I feared that. I wonder if the next time I wash if I can keep that from happening?