Skiing and Tomato

Our week off from school and work was fun, cold, and snowy! It looked like this:





and this:



Tomato was a fast one, and turned out very close to what I expected. I used about 3.5 skeins of Blue Sky Alpacas Dyed Cotton in Navy, and a partial skein of Pickle on 4.5 mm needles. I wanted to knit a top with about 1 inch of negative ease, so I modified the pattern to make a finished bust between the smallest size (31") and one up from that (35.5"). I think I was successful.

These are the mods I made:
Upper body I cast on sts as if for the smallest size per pattern, but repeated the increase rounds 23 times (a hybrid of sizes) so that I had 238 sts total (26 ea front, 56 ea sleeve, 74 for back).
Divide for armholes cast on 1 st on either side of m for ea underarm (again, a hybrid of sizes) using method as per patt, and cast on 22 sts for centre front. This means across the front (26 + 22 + 26) and back (74) plus 4 sts picked up (1 on ea side of underarm m) I had 152 sts, which at a gauge of 4.5 sts per inch, equalled 33.8" which was about 0.2" of negative ease...this would do! Especially since the fair isle section is not as forgiving and stretchy as the stockinette, it would work for me.
Lower body did not decrease on the main colour round (after the 1 round of contrast colour).
Waist decrease repeat decrease rounds 3 times total
Neck edging k2p2 for 7 rounds, then work in patt to 2 sts before first m, work 2 tog, sl m, work 2 tog, work to 2 sts before next m, work 2 tog, sl m, work 2 tog, work in patt to end of rnd.
Sleeve edging pick up and knit 2 sts at underam, pm, pick up and knit 2 sts at underarm (4 sts picked up total = 60 sts). Then decrease 4 sts evenly on next rnd. I used 4 dpns, so I k1, k2tog, then dec 1 st per dpn on the next 2 dpns, and then k until the last 3 sts of rnd, and k2tog and k1.

I'm just a teensy bit unhappy with the shape of the sweater immediately before starting the waist decreases, to me it looks like it got a little bigger. I am convinced this is because of the nature of stockinette following fair isle (guess maybe I still was not loose enough in that section)...if I were to knit it again, I would start the decreases on the round after the last contrast colour round. However, I'm pretty pleased overall!

This may be up next...Happy Easter!