Liesl

I knit a Liesl yesterday.

Ok, you're right -- I didn't really knit an entire sweater in one day. I did knit the entire body in one day. I used some really lovely bulky weight Venezia that I'd bought on sale at Bad Woman Yarn. It's a beautiful deep, dark purple. I haven't taken a picture yet, but it's #128 if you follow the Venezia link.

I knit the size 30" with the low neckline, knowing that my gauge loosens when I knit and that the lace would block out a bit wider. Have I mentioned my new technique for sizing fitted sweaters? I just knit to fit my under-bust measurement and then add huge bust darts right under the arm holes. In this case, after putting my shoulder stitches on waste yarn, I added two YO's in place of one K2tog in the underarm. In the next lace row I again made only 3 k2tog's in the underarm and made YO's for all stitches in front of them. I began decreasing in the next lace row by still only doing 3 k2tog's in the underarm but, after my usual 4 YO's, making k3tog's across the extra stitches. I did the same in the next lace row, too, and regained my original stitch count.
This sounds like gibberish, I realize, but just get in touch if you want more details.

I knit 16 lace repeats total below the underarm, 5 rows garter stitch, and bound off knitwise on the wrong side.

Then I blocked it.

It grew.

It got longer. Donned wet, Liesl reached my knees.

I'm being a little melodramatic. I just pulled the lace width-wise and achieved more or less the sweater shape I'd intended. But know this! A Liesl in this yarn can be as loooooong as you want her to be. Save some yarn and knitting time by just blocking it to length. She could have stretched by almost double.

Now.
Now Liesl fits perfectly across my back...
But.
There are some other problems. The arm holes are HUGE. I can easily fit my head through the arm holes with room to spare. I remember this problem from the Cloud Bolero I made ages ago, which was the free version of this same pattern.
Related to this, the bust shaping below the saggy armpits now hits at my belly button. Shoot.

What to do?
To hike up the armpits and place the bust shaping back at my bust I'm going to cut off the top of the cardi 4 lace repeats above the shoulder opening. Then I'll knit on a garter stitch trim to finish the collar, probably with some decreases to draw in the neckline.

Ok, did it. There are 113 stitches on my needle after The Cut. I'll k2tog every stitch in the first row of garter. I'll let you know how it ends up!

Oh, and here's a picture to make this post more interesting (thanks to Sooz!). My finished "Favorite Cardigan":