Just love my red tunic! A big shout out to the designer as well as to Cheryl23 for supplying me with more yarn! No one would EVER find the mismatch of dye lot.

I have included a photo of my retirement, the very planned purpose of making this garment. I loved it that night as much as I did today at our photo shoot in a local Japanese Garden.

R.E.D. stands for Reverse Every Direction!

My interpretation was it was as if the directions had been thrown up into the air and one had to figure out where to use which direction.

So, where to begin… The first thing to realize is that this design is meant to be asymmetrical.
Then, orient yourself to where the slit is (on the left side).
Then, realizing what an increase and a decrease looks like in a schematic.
That’s when the confusion begins.

I did not feel like the written directions were matching the schematic and did not know which was correct for final product, so I made a life size paper pattern that I could actually try on. Learning that the schematic was correct, I adjusted the written directions, accordingly.

Changes to the directions as follows:

BACK
As written until:
Right edge shaping ~
Bind off (at beg of RS rows), 5 sts once, 4 sts once, and increase 1 st at same edge every 6th row 9 times and when armhole measures 8 1/2“, bind off from this edge 4 sts 25 times, 1 st once.

NOTE: I totally ignored the direction of bind off from this edge 2 st 7 times and 1 st 20 times and chose the bind off as written for the left edge. Also, changed decrease to increase.

AT THE SAME TIME
Left edge shaping ~
When piece measures 8” from marker, work left edge shaping by binding off (at beg of WS rows) 3 sts 3 times then decrease 1 st 27 times at beg of every WS row (left edge, still) until no stitches are remaining.

NOTE: So, basically I changed increase to decrease and followed all other directions in this section.

FRONT
As written until:
Right Side Shaping ~
Followed directions including v-neck shaping.

Left Side Shaping ~
From neck edge, bind off from this edge 2 st 7 times and 1 st 20 times. (I utilized the direction that I ignored, above.)
NOTE: This time, I ignored the dec 1 st every 6th row until no sts rem at neck edge and from armhole edge bind off 4 sts until no sts rem at armhole edge.

MORE:
• Yardage amount on skeins, hence yardage shortage (friend helped, however dye lot issue)
• One size, check gauge
• Fabric quite elastic and durable
• All increase and decrease shaping done with cast on and bind off to keep pattern to very edge
• Used double pointed needle rather than cable needle
• Entire fabric is “cabled” which is how the diagonal stripes are made
• Crochet edge, chose picot edge eliminating around hem for a more modern appeal
• Did not block