Minimalist Cardi - Body

I finished up the body for the Minimalist Cardi! Because of the way the neckband works, you have to sew the shoulder seams up before you finish knitting the neckband. By adding back neck shaping, I changed the measurement of the back neck, so I couldn't follow the pattern exactly. I ended up knitting some of it, then sewing it down to the back neck (leaving the last inch or so free), and then knitting more of it to see where I was. Once the stitches on both sides were just one row apart, I Kitchener Stitched the middle back of the neck band and finished sewing the band to the back. It wasn't hard, just fiddley. You can see in the picture how the neckband wants to roll to the inside and I think that's going to be the best thing for it to do. I'm blocking the body now, just to get the neck/front bands trained the way I want them (this pic is pre-blocking which is why the sweater looks a bit squinky right now). I have opened up the front bands to almost their full width (I'm letting them roll in a bit to make the edge look finished), but around the neck, I'm letting the bands roll like they want to. I think it will fit my neck better that way than trying to keep them open all the way around.

I have started the sleeves, but I've already started messing with the pattern on them. If you look in the Ravelry section for this pattern, lots of people had trouble with the sleeves falling down and being longer than they wanted. The picture in IK shows them as 3/4 length sleeves, but since they get larger above the rib and make a blouson kind of shape, they need to be a bit longer than they look to get that "puff." If you look at the picture, you'll see that the model has her arms bent - could the sleeves be falling down on her and the bent arms was the way the stylist kept them in place? It's entirely possible that this is the case. For my own sleeves, I've decreased the stitch count for the ribbing (you do a huge increase when you start the seed stitch anyway, so a few more stitches won't matter) and I'm going to double check some measurements on myself before I decide how much sleeve to knit before I start the sleeve caps. For the size I'm making (35 1/2 inch bust), the total sleeve length as the pattern is written comes out almost to 19 inches. I've got to double check my shoulder bone to wrist bone measurement, but this sounds longer than 3/4 length sleeves, even allowing for a bit extra to puff.

Oh, and since I was blocking the body of the Minimalist Cardi, I'm also finally blocking the Highly Modified Chinese Lace Pullover. It looks like I'm going to be doing some seaming this weekend!