Cherie Amour Body Complete

...and my rack looks SWEET in it.  I really love the way this sweater is turning out.  It is going to fit me great, and it is knitting up so quickly!  I think the color is really good for the style of sweater it is too.  Knit up, the colors kind of reminds me of one of those retro orange-ey crochet afghans your Gram has lying over the back of her couch.  This sweater also has a retro-ey feel.

I have to say, though, that this pattern is really making me feel like a stupid knitter.  I know I am not the only one having issues with it, but MAN.  Getting the lace chart to line up with what I'm doing, making sure I have the decreases right, etc. has been really tough.  The pattern is hair-pulling ambiguous when it comes to the lace chart and decreases for the body above the ribbing.  After reading the Ravelry boards, Knitty boards, and other blogs, I came up with some mods that helped me through this upper body portion of this sweater.  I'll post them here in the hopes that they may help someone stuck in the future:

How I proceeded after the increase round right after the ribbing, I have 103 stitches:
-for every RS row, k1 and do the 6-stitch pattern repeat to the end of the row
-start the decreases with row 1 of the neckline decrease chart.
-decrease 2 stitches in row 1 and every 4 row after, by k1, ssk, work row in pattern until last 3 stitches, k2tog k1.  Work the decreases into each end of the row into an appropriate spot in the pattern repeat.  Keep the pattern repeat lined up.
-do this until you have 95 stitches, divide for arms and keep decreasing the same way until you have 13 stitches.  Knit back and join shoulders.

I hope this helps.  The most important thing for me was just to keep the lace pattern repeat in check and decrease in a logical way.  The only thing I screwed up was I only repeated rows 1 and 2 of the lace pattern repeat.  Rows 3 and 4 just kind of got lost with my confusion and I didn't notice until I was almost done the BACK!  It still looks ok to me though, and I just resumed the correct lace pattern on the sleeves.  Oh well, I'm unintentionally making it my own!

Comments

[naomi]

Damn-that's hot! I love the color.

[Ragan]

It looks great! The color does remind me of an afghan my grandmother had. :o)
I am sure that posting the mods will be very helpful to fellow knitters. I like that the middle of the sweater has a tight ribbing to accent the waist. It is very nice! Woo-hoo for enduring hair pulling and all.

[Marjorie]

hi, I'm just going through Ravelry and reading the KAL before I start mine. I wonder if part of the problem was you were using a bulky yarn. I also thought this was written for bulky yarn, but someone mentioned the pattern yarn actually is aran (despite that bulky is in its name). I was planning to do this in bulky, so I'll be checking your mods later.