Level 2 - Body Completed

You know those computer role playing games, where you start out a Level 1 mage and as you go forth in your quest, you fight battles and cast spells and you gained experience points so that you’ll eventually get up to the next level?

Well, being a self taught knitter, I’ve been collecting those experience points from lots of books and the internet. I just realized that I might have enough experience points now to be bumped up a Level - Intermediate maybe?

Why? Because I modified a pattern! No, I didn’t make huge alterations, add on or subtract major design elements; I just adjusted the size. Does that count?

So, naturally, I need to blog about it before I forgot what I did.

So, I’m knitting this for my friend Marla. She is not a little bitty girl but not like husky or anything. She is just a tall, full figured woman. Nice body and this is coming from a gay boy! I want to make sure that this jacket fits her with as little ease as possible so that we can still see her nice silhouette and it doesn’t look like she has a huge carpet rug wrapped around her.

Looking at the pattern, and measuring Marla like 15,000 times, I’ve concluded that she is slightly bustier than a Medium but not quite a Large.

I racked my brains and eventually just threw all the sizing information from the pattern out the window. I’ll just knit the circle to her exact body measurement. Even as I started, I started the pattern differently. Instead of using the recommended cast on, I cast on using Emily Ocker’s circular cast on. (I'll post the technique if people request it.) As I started, I assumed that I’d be knitting till the diameter of the circle equaled the width of Marla’s back, from armpit to armpit. Then I placed the armhole opening and continued knitting the outer ring of the circle. While doing all this, I had to make sure that I maintained the correct ratio of the stockinette and garter rings of the pattern, and also to remember to increase 8 stitches per round, every other round. Here are my notes. After I created the armhole opening, I had to make sure that the rest of the circle was large enough to wrap around her bust area. Let’s just put it this way, Marla’s little boobies are not that little. So, here again, I had to modify the pattern and knit a wider lapel round to accommodate for her Baywatch boobies.

So after months due, here it is:
Phew, that was nerve wrecking. But there is another challenge now. I’ve made the body look fine, but now since I moved her armhole opening, I now need to make modifications on the sleeve shaping. She made it clear that she didn’t want no puffy sleeves. I need to think about the sleeve shaping and I have no experience about this at all and will just winging it.

Happy 4th.