It fits!

Yes, indeedy!  My pretty sweater does indeed fit me.  It's a bit snug, which is what I wanted to accomplish, hence that side shaping (which I did totally on the fly.  Winged it as I went along.).   My kids are always telling me that nobody wears boxy sweaters any more.  And they could be right.  The thing about boxy sweaters is that you can put 3 layers underneath them, and it doesn't matter.  This little sweater only tolerates one turtleneck, so I'm not going to be very warm in it, but one must suffer for beauty.

I took a basic lace pattern and played with it, and I really do like the result.  Then I broke that pattern down to a very simple element, and that became the bodice.  I'm sorry now I did that, since I love the bottom lace to bits.  But it's fine, and then I repeated the bodice pattern as a edge ruffle effect.  No lace on the sleeve proper; I was too lazy to put it in, and besides, I'm always cold, so no holes on the arms made sense to me.  OK, it was total laziness.  So?

No, the sleeve is not short, I just squashed the sleeve so that you could see the ruffle.

As usual, I worked the sleeve top down.  I hate sewing in sleeves, and learned very quickly from Elizabeth Zimmermann and Barbara Walker how to do sleeves by picking up armhole stitches and working down.  I almost always pick up the stitches and knit them, and then work a couple of rows of garter stitch.  I love the way it sets off the armhole, and it just works.  Here's a pic.  you can see the garter stitch rows lying snug up against the bodice.  Usually I just do a t-shape armhole, but this time I did a little bit of shaping, which you can also see.

I did a garter stitch border on the neckline.  All together, it was a fun knit.  I winged about 90% of it.  I did the math for how many stitches and repeats, made sure that the armhole wouldn't bump into the lace pattern, totally fudged that side shaping, which looks very nice on me despite how weird it looks flat.  Picked up my armhole stitches, never wrote down exactly how many stitches I picked up for the first sleeve, so had to wing it with the second one, but I can't tell any difference so it came out OK.

I like a fake side seam; I do every thing in the round when possible; no sewing for me, ever, ever, ever!  My side "seam" is a purl stitch which I work every round.  I did my usual 3-needle bind-off for the shoulder.  I do this a bit different from most people:  first I knit the knit through the front and back stitches, and then turn the work and bind off.  I like the extra strength it gives the shoulder.  Here's a pic inside out, so you can see all this.  Oh, and as I went along, I worked in the yarn so that I had virtually nothing to finish off at the end.

Maybe I can get the Hubbo to take a decent picture of me wearing it.  Or maybe not.

pendie - I basically just did it off the top of my head once I had to correct number of sts to cast on. I've not done a sweater design for sale yet, so I'd really have to behave myself on redoing this and actually write down numbers. Maybe a KAL? What do you think?

Ibunnysavetroy - Thanks!  It looks very well with my white hair!

Wall-to-wall books - So go finish a sweater!  tee hee. 

KV - I have a lot of sweaters, only they are ancient.  Really really old.  I just haven't felt like knitting one for a long time, but this was such fun that I'm planning the next one.

DJNL - It's not very warm at all, even with a turtleneck underneath it, but it feels very nice on. 

CathyR  - Thank you.  I'm enjoying it.