My puff sleeved cardigan is nearing completion.  It needs one more sleeve and the button band.  I’ll probably make the button band next, in order to give myself time to decide about the sleeves.  Since I had to drastically reduce the number of stitches in the pattern to make it fit me, I didn’t really have enough left for the puffiness to work out.  I may rip the sleeve I have and make them both shorter, but I’m not sure yet.  I also did the lace in stockinette instead of reverse stockinette, mostly because it was turning out odd looking when I tried it in reverse.  I may have lengthened the body a little, I’m not sure.  Which brings me to my only real beef with this pattern…

Why, for the love of God, are there no measurements written into the pattern?  For instance “Knit even until x inches long and then begin waist shaping.”  This pattern uses number of rows instead, which I’ve never dealt with in a top down pattern before.  This makes your  row gauge  much more important than it probably  should be.  Mine is different, so I’ve been pretty much making up when to do things, since I couldn’t be bothered to do the math after the collar.  I also think there may be a problem in the way the lace pattern is written, but I’ve worked it out.

Don’t get me wrong, I still think this is an adorable pattern, and my love for the book in general is undimmed.  I haven’t checked to see if all the patterns are written this way.  I just found this particular aspect to be a little difficult… maybe not as much to me, because I’ve knit tons of top down sweaters and knew I’d have to compensate, but to anyone new to them it might really throw you off.