I'm not much for "women's" magazines. As much as I like the concept of personal style, I don't much care about fashion. My magazine genre of preference is the knitting magazine. Not only do the patterns and articles give me artistic inspiration, they are often educational and motivating.
When I saw the premiere edition of knit.wear magazine, I earmarked a few different patterns for future reference. That's always my first step: I use those little self-sticking flags (like miniature post-it notes) to mark the patterns that catch my eye. Then I go through and read more about each to see if it's a pattern I actually want to follow. Then I consider the yarn suggestion, and peruse ravelry to see how it looks on various bodies, in various yarns, and with a multitude of modifications.
This is how I decided that I wanted to make the Basket Yoke Pullover, in the suggested yarn and with just two personalized modifications. The first thing I noticed about this sweater is the luscious, slightly fuzzy yarn. It's Berroco Ultra Alpaca, a 100% alpaca worsted-weight yarn. That means it'll knit up relatively quickly (thanks to being worsted weight), be super-cozy but also very light-weight (thanks to the alpaca).
The next thing that I noticed about the sweater was that it was the work of a designer whom I admire, Wendy Bernard. She designs curve-hugging, flattering (for my shape, anyway) sweaters and is generous in her advice about how to personalize a project. Just check out her book, Custom Knits, to learn more. This sweater is knit from the top down, which makes it theoretically easy to try on as you knit. I say "theoretically" because of course the sweater will look and fit very differently once the whole thing is done. That said, at least you are alerted to disasters - such as a too small neck hole, or that you can't get your arms through the arm holes - before the whole body of the sweater is knit.
What I knew I would want to change was the neck line. I like boat neck tops, and they flatter my strong shoulders. I have been burned, however, by the boat neck-turned-flash dance sweater, so I didn't want to take any chances with this one. I decided to modify the neck band so that it would be just a little narrower without sacrificing the overall look or intention of the design.
The alpaca yarn grew a lot in length after I soaked and blocked the finished sweater, but I was very happy with the body's resulting length. The waist shaping even hit me in the right spot! The sleeves, however, ended up about two inches too long and I realized that I didn't care for the bell shape. So, after the sweater was dry and I'd sewn in all of the body ends, I ripped out the last five inches of a sleeve, reknit without the bell shaping and making it shorter, and tried it on again. Success! I did the same change to sleeve 2 and ended up with a sweater that I love.
I ended up only needing 4 of the 5 hanks of yarn that I purchased. Thankfully, Fiber Gallery let me return the unused hank for a store credit. If you'd like to read the knitterly details of this project, as well as more information on my modifications, check out my ravelry page.
A note about choosing your sweater size based on bust measurements:
If, like me, you are overall petite with but with a full bust (in sewing terms, that's a C cup or larger), you may prefer to take a "high bust" measurement rather than a regular bust measurement when trying to decide which sweater size to make. The larger the bust measurement, the larger the whole sweater will be. If you are small with a full bust, you may end up with an oversized sweater. By using your high-bust measurement you are more likely to end up with a well-fitting sweater, though you may have to make some accommodations for the bustline (i.e. more increases, using darts, etc).
I know, for example, that if I make the 36" sweater (since I have a 36" bust measurement) I will end up with a too-big-for-me sweater. My high-bust measurement (that's just above the swell of your bustline, rather than at its largest part) is 34". The Basket Yoke Pullover pattern had a size option for a 34", which means that if my gauge matches the designer's perfectly, the finished sweater will have a bust measurement of 34". That would be 2" of negative ease, which sounds excessive but since I knew the sweater would be fairly stretchy and I wanted it to be curve-hugging, I decided to use my high-bust measurement so that the overall sweater fit would be to my liking. I knew that I could always add some room at the bust if necessary, and even do bust darts if absolutely necessary. With a stretchy fabric, though, I didn't find either of those fixes necessary. The sweater stretches across my bust in a way that I like without looking pulled-too-tight across my bustline.
