Oh, man am I on a finishing kick!

Back in April of last year I was overwhelmed with excitement for the Crochet Me book. As such, I printed out a heavily marked-up copy of Chloe Nightingale's Icelandic Turtleneck pattern, ordered a bag of Rowan 4 Ply Soft (on closeout; hence the colour I wouldn't ordinarily approach without hazmat gear) from Webs, and started on it while visiting my parents in upstate New York. Because my gauge was way off, I started out following the instructions for size L, aiming to end up with a small.

By... October, I finally started to motor. I brought the project with me on the road for the now-released Crochet Me book tour, and was sitting in an Interweave meeting when I finished the section of working even after the yoke increases. I tossed the in-progress sweater over my head, and couldn't stifle my exclamation of what I'm sure was an expletive on account of it being way. too. big. Especially in the back.

I knew what I had to do to fix it (it wasn't just that my gauge had relaxed a bit), and started right away.

I ripped back to the last round of yoke increases and redid it. Now, I cut one corner in executing this fix. If I had it to do over again, I would not cut this corner. (And no, just because I could rip it all back again doesn't mean I consider that to be a viable option.) I was impatient and mad at myself for not anticipating this issue*, and, well. The corner I cut was that I didn't rip back further; I could have started adjusting the sizing before I did, and because I didn't the sweater is still a little loose at my chest (but not very noticeably so; I can live with it).

*The issue is that I have a very large bust. I wear a 32-D. My back is around an XS and my front a S. I had to cut more than four inches of width from the back of this sweater and about an inch from the front (that was due to my gauge having relaxed).

I figured out where I needed the center of each shoulder to be so I could treat the front and back separately for my calculations. This way, I could alter the back of the sweater to be smaller than the front while ensuring the sleeves would be where they needed to be.

In redoing the final round of yoke increases (Round 8), I cut 7 increases from the front, and most of the increases from the back. I figured out how many to cut by measuring my gauge from the working sweater. I needed to cut 4.5 inches from the back, so I eliminated increases equal to the number of stitches I was getting in 4.5 inches. I ended up having twenty-one more stitches in front than in back.

I also cut four stitches from each armhole, since the armholes were too big my first time.

To compensate for the front still not being small enough to fit snugly, I worked bust darts to cinch the fabric under my bust. That's the perspective, at least, when working from the top down. If I'd been working from the bottom up, I would have used darts to add fabric. Make sense? Anyway, since I could, I simply marked where the decreases should be while I was wearing the sweater, then, in those two spots, I worked a double decrease (in this case, dc3tog) in the same spot on two consecutive rounds. Here's a badly drawn-on image of where I placed the darts.

Here's how the sweater fit after these major adjustments (click for larger images):

The pattern calls for waist and hip shaping, and I did that too, adjusting for having shifted the balance of the sweater. Here's another badly drawn-on image of where the shaping is on the front of the finished sweater. I didn't mark on the photo that I also did a bit of shaping at the sides of the sweater (where seams would be if it had been worked in pieces), since on a few occasions I wanted to decrease or increase by six stitches in a round rather than by the four called for.

Et voila!

Started: April 2007
Finished: 26th January 2008
Pattern: Icelandic Turtleneck by Chloe Nightingale from Crochet Me: Designs to Fuel the Crochet Revolution
Yarn: Rowan 4 Ply Soft from Webs
Hook: 3.75mm Addi Turbo

The 4 Ply Soft is simply perfect for this pattern. The fabric is soft, stretchy, and warm. On account of all that pink, I will not be making the armwarmers. And I will likely wear the top layered over something, like shown here. I definitely want to make another one of these, in a colour I like better. Good thing I wrote all this out here, because the notes I had stuffed in my project bag barely made sense to me even now.

Finally, if it wasn't made apparent by this post, this is an excellent pattern for modifying! I recommend it as a first sweater pattern, since it's so straightforward, and certainly as a first modification pattern, again because it's so straightforward. Rock.