Another vintage jumper, hooray!

I am really pleased with how this turned out.
Celester on Ravelry kindly passed this WWII-era pattern along (her version is here). Of course I had to cast on many more stitches than called for, and lengthen the body quite a bit (12" before binding off for the armholes? hah!) I used the handy Knitting Daily Waist-Shaping Calculator to figure the decreases and increases. I knit the body in the round with faux seams in garter stitch, and my only regret there is that I worked the waist decreases into the seam stitch. Not a good idea, it looks a bit sloppy, but you'd probably only notice if I drew your attention to it. If I could knit it over again I'd also add back shaping, since there's a little bit of extra fabric back there. I was worried about that as I was knitting the body, but it looks fine. I also bound off at the neck half an inch sooner than the pattern says, using Elizabeth Zimmerman's stretchier sewn bind-off.

Celeste mentioned in her pattern notes that she had a difficult time getting her arms through the sleeves, and when I cast on the 66 stitches called for I realized that was probably why. Cast on 76, increased to 86, and they fit perfectly.

Look at my puffed sleeves! Weeeeeeeeeeeee!

The pattern calls for four buttons to fasten up the neck, and I found just that number of plastic pearl-look buttons in my grandparents' old candy tin (they're probably from the '60s). I later noticed that one of them was broken, so I made do with three. Crocheted the button-loops. Oh, and this yarn is really lovely—I wish I had used it for my Little March Hare jumper, as the quality is better than the Cashcotton (i.e., no little white strands of angora flying up as you knit).

Pattern: here, courtesy of Celeste
Yarn: Rowan RYC Cashsoft 4-ply in Monet, 7 balls
Needles: #2s for the ribbing and #3s for the body
Raveled here.

If I were still in Galway I'd be wearing this every day. Ah well.