Well its done, and it is nice.
Pattern: Rage Management by L'Atelier
Yarn: Highlander by Alpaca with a Twist
color 2012
I wore it yesterday to a surprise 50th birthday party for my college roommate and it was just perfect. I can't believe we are all turning 50 this year.
Unfortunately the party was held in one of those old dark neighborhood bars where there was little light and lots of people and none of my pictures came out. As usual we were running late and there were no pictures before the party, and the after-party photo op was ruined by an unfortunate encounter with some onion dip. Almost 50 or not, some of us still can't go out in public without making a mess.
Today the sweater is on the blocking board where it belongs, and should have been before I wore it. Remember I blocked the pieces before assembly but then ripped and re-knitted parts. 
You can see the re-knitted bodice in better detail here, along with the ribbed neckline, still unblocked.
I did end up redoing the hem but I took the easy way out. I just picked up the cast on edge and worked down from there, using the same pattern of reverse stockinette and stockinette rows that is used at the top of the sweater. Rather than ending the pattern with three rows of stockinette however, I used three rows of seed stitch just to eliminate that tendency to roll. This way the hem picks up the pattern from the top and also echoes the seed stitch hems on the sleeves.
I am finding that putting my sweaters on Matilda after is helpful because I can analyze the fit much better, even though the shoulders are a little wonky due to her lack of arms.
I don't know why I didn't do this years ago. Somehow in my brain there seems to be some disconnect between fitting sewn garments and fitting knitted garments, although this is something I am really aiming to work on.
Although you can't see it here, I do need to work on the way I do shoulders to accommodate my forward shoulders, although usually sweaters are stretchy enough it is not as big a deal as on sewn clothes.
What I do notice from this picture is that although the pieces are the same length it hangs quite differently, something I notice on myself as well. Twisting around while looking in a mirror is not really helpful from a fitting perspective so I didn't really understand the problem until I looked at it on Matilda.
There are actually two issues here:
First, I need to add length at the front over the bust. It has been a couple of years now since I expanded outward from my B-cup to my post-menopausal D cup and I am just overcoming the denial stage and learning to deal with the requisite alterations, I definitely need to do some short row work to add space over the bust without lengthening the side seams.
Second, the back is still too long in the middle of the back relative to the side seams. I know from fitting patterns, that my back waist length is a good bit shorter than my front waist length (with the reverse being true for the rise below the waist, longer back rise and shorter front rise) and I also have a fairly flat back due to my scoliosis. To accommodate this and achieve less fabric in the middle I need to do something almost like a reverse dart, adding length with short rows at the side seams, taking the extra out in the middle:
Something like this: | >--------<|
I am tempted to play with this on my next sweater. I am already up to the waist in the back so I am at a good place to try this, although it is being knitted with two yarns held together, the base yarn of which is mohair, not fun for ripping out if I don't like it.
But then, its only yarn, right?
