I made a desperate attempt to finish this gorgeous project over Thanksgiving, but sadly I failed. So here I am finishing it over winter break. I didn't want to drown in this sweater (my sheep one, unfortunately, has stretched with time and someone not long ago mistook it for a dress, which is not how I intended it--not into the shapeless sweater look!!) so I figured I could sub worsted for bulky and go down two needle sizes.

12/22: All the charts are FINALLY done, and I sewed in the majority of the loose ends. Finishing on projects like this is so daunting--I still have to seam the underarms and shoulders (kind of, my shoulders ended up wonky). I like set-in sleeves better, esp. for colorwork projects where you can see the floats between the raglan decreases, so I considered rewriting the pattern, but laziness and a desire to wear the sweater took over.

These amazing charts are too fabulous, but I was not wowed by the quality of the knitting instructions, especially for the price of the pattern. Will make better notes on potential mods/issues once I finish.

12/23: DONE OMG IT'S BEAUTIFUL. I'm so glad I went down two needle sizes from suggested and used worsted; it fits like a glove. Just need to steam it into submission and will get pics!

12/28: No project is truly done without pics, so here they are. I ended up having to reinforce the decrease line between the sleeves and body because I thought it looked sloppy. I think if I knit this again I would just do set-in sleeves. I have so much midnight heather left, I need to figure out something to do with it all.

Gauge: 5 st = 1 in. in pattern on US 8

Measurements of finished sweater:

-length from bottom edge to beginning of armhole: 17.5"

-circumference: 35" (17.5" front and back after blocking, no ease)

-length from bottom edge to center neck below the ribbing: 20"

-length from bottom edge to top of left and right shoulders: 24"

The ribbing at the bottom edge is 3" long. The neck ribbing is 1.5" but was rather improvised, so I do not remember how many I picked up or how I decreased for it.

Mods:

-Disregarded the initials at the bottom of the chart. Did not want.

-Made the neck ribbing longer and added some decreases so that it would not be a boatneck.

-Reinforced decrease line between arms and body.

-Worked the right sleeve in MC stranding so that the gauge would be similar to the left.

-Added three extra rounds of ribbing at hips to make sweater hang better.

Things you might find weird about this pattern:

-The yoke chart works, but it is very strange, because you have to follow it in a circle. I didn't find it overly difficult, but I wasn't too concerned with following it exactly.

-As someone else mentioned, the raglan decreases come every row instead of every other row, which created an exaggerated gap between arms and body. Ended up having to seam around the decrease line so that it looked neat, otherwise there would've been visible floats.

-The way the neckband is written lends itself to a boat neck or (worst case scenario) a floppy neck, so if you want a traditional sweater neck you may need to increase the length of the ribbing.

Yes, this pattern is expensive. Ordinarily I wouldn't pay so much for a pattern, particularly an imperfect one, but it's incredibly beautiful. The chart is a work of art. I prefer to look at it as, "Could I ever buy a sweater like this, that fits me so well, for less than $50 total cost to me?" (what I paid total for materials + pattern in this case, not counting labor hours, since it's for me and I would've spent those hours watching TV anyway). I highly doubt it, plus it's satisfying to be able to say I made it!

Failed IntSweMoDo #4.