All during the knitting of this sweater I doubted the finished object: the neck seemed too loose, the body too narrow, the colours of the yarn I chose non-harmonious. All I can say is "trust the pattern" because none of these things were an issue in the end. The blocking helped a lot to smooth the lumps of knitting and it looked so great on her:
Modifications - I added at least 2 inches to the narrow torso part, and more to the bottom edge. I didn't use the size 9 needles on the cuff and bottom ribbing, because I didn't want these parts to pull in. I did use size 9 on the neck ribbing... The rest of the sweater uses size 10 needles. I also made the sleeves long, long, long and flared them into bell sleeves with more ribbing than the original design called for. My version took 6 skeins of Noro Silk Garden with some bits left over from each skein. I skipped one of the colours in this Noro colourway - a flat brown - because I didn't like it; I just clipped it out and reattached the clipped ends when this colour came up in the skeins. The hardest part was matching the colour changes across arms and body, and although it turned out rather well, it took a lot of thought and planning and matching of skeins because with Noro, the colour changes don't match from skein to skein even in the same dye lot. It all worked out and the colour really suits her, I think!
She asked for more sweaters from this pattern. The fact that it's a top down raglan that would work up really quickly now that I know how to fit it to her specifically, means that she'll get her wish!
