Blanche Too: Making Progress (Plus Knitting Math Details and More Bitching!)

As you can see, I'm making some progress on this sweater:

Blanche Too Jumper

A few, in the weeds, pieces of info:

• I'm making the size 34 with mods. Mods include: 
• Going down a needle size on the body and 2 needle sizes on the rib to get horizontal gauge.
• Making the size 32, from a length perspective on the sleeves and sleeve heads (Sleeves are more or less the same circumference as the 34, for what it's worth.)

• My vertical gauge gets more stitches to the inch than the pattern gauge, regardless of which size I'm making, which is working on my behalf since it means I don't have to make as many changes to shorten the relevant areas.

• Having said this, I still need to add some length to the size 32 sleeve head because the combo of going down a size and knitting more rows to the inch (than the pattern gauge) means I'm still short half an inch of fabric length on those sleeve heads.

• Sleeve head depth does not align directly with armsyce depth, as I've noticed in the past. When I have checked ratios from the pattern, as written and do the math, using all of the pattern instructions and gauge for a size 32, the armscye is 7.5 inches deep but the sleeve head is 5.6 inches deep.

• I've gone with 5.75 inches of depth over 46 rows to split the difference between the sleeve head depth of the size 32 and 34.

• I made the armscyes @7.5" deep (size 32 depth) but the left is slightly longer than the other (something I tried to fix numerous times before deciding that I was apt to start wrecking things if I kept removing rows). That's driving me crazy but I sense it will block out as the difference isn't significant.

• At 7.5" armscye length, (what I went with to keep things simple since I've got to consider potential complexities with the neck band proportions), the idea was that I'd be able to just knit the size 32 sleeve (designed for the 7.5 inch armscye). One of the bullets above shows that didn't exactly work, but it was my best option short of drafting this pattern for myself.

OK, hopefully all the math has now been considered and I can just work from my notes to complete the final parts: knitting sleeves, knitting neckline pattern, seaming in sleeves, weaving in ends.

One last word on the pattern - which has once again disappointed me:

In the circular instructions, one is advised, when creating the front neckline, to cast off a certain number of stitches. I carefully followed those instructions. However, when one goes to the neck pattern instructions (which are, stupidly, in the flat pattern area - esp. given that this part of the work is done in the round whether you've made the sweater flat or circularly?!?!), those instructions advise you to pick up and knit the front neck stitches off the holder you've kept them on.

Now, I may suck at reading knitting patterns, but I've looked this over 15 times and I can't see how I'm misinterpreting things. Point is, now I'm going to have neck seam (vs. continuation of live stitches) where it shouldn't be.

That pisses me off big time.

Look, I don't really care about that seam. It might actually give more structure to the neck band, which is something I generally appreciate. The seam will really be most visible from the wrong side, though my rib pattern will not be continuous from the body. Of course, that might be me trying to put a good spin on things since there is NO way to go back and fix this without incurring hours of work for minimal gain. Work I do not intend to undertake given how I feel about the project thus far.

If it were my mistake, I'd be kicking myself. Somehow, though, since it's the pattern's error (as far as I can tell), I'm not so fussed.

See why it's a good idea to put all of your instructions, for one method, in the same section of your two-part pattern?? I suspect someone would have QA'ed that error, if there'd been a consolidation of info.