I have a love-hate relationship with this sweater. Dear Daughter showed me a photo and requested it for Christmas - LAST Christmas. Yes, that's right, Christmas of 2012. I found the pattern on Ravelry
(Owls by Kate Davies), and purchased it. I measured her myself. I could not find acrylic yarn in teal, the color that she wanted, so I used a double strand of worsted and played around until I got guage. Then I got going - it is knit in the round from the bottom up, so it's a seamless garment. Got to the armpits and then through both sleeves without any difficulty. I did lengthen the sleeves like she wanted, joined them to the body, and got to work on the cute little cable owls. She came home for Christmas, just as I was ready to do the neckline ribbing and tried it on. It was perfect. The hips were perfect, the front, the sleeves - everything she wanted. The back, was gigantic - probably 8 inches too big. We were both crushed.
After a suitable period of mourning, like two months, I took sweater out and considered how to fix the problem. I was nonplussed. If it was knitted in pieces, I would simply reknit the back. If it did not have the cabled owl pattern, perhaps I could cut an 8 inch wide wedge of knitting out and sew it back up - if I was brave enough, that is, and I wasn't brave enough. So, I ripped everything out except the sleeves and started over again, but not before I checked the guage of the poor, giant sweater - and it was off. How could that be? I knitted several swatches until I got perfect guage. By this time, Dear Daughter had moved to the other coast, and I asked her to measure herself, since she had been eating healthily and exercising like a fiend, and had dropped a size or two. Armed with the new measurements and a smaller, newly correct guage, I decided to drop one size and got to work. I kept checking my guage throughout, and it is perfect. I'm nearly done - I'm halfway through the owls. But as I was laying it out to photograph it this morning, it looked quite small to me... Yup. The hips are 31 instead of 34, and the body seems short. I don't have the heart or the time this morning to measure it.
After a suitable period of mourning, like two months, I took sweater out and considered how to fix the problem. I was nonplussed. If it was knitted in pieces, I would simply reknit the back. If it did not have the cabled owl pattern, perhaps I could cut an 8 inch wide wedge of knitting out and sew it back up - if I was brave enough, that is, and I wasn't brave enough. So, I ripped everything out except the sleeves and started over again, but not before I checked the guage of the poor, giant sweater - and it was off. How could that be? I knitted several swatches until I got perfect guage. By this time, Dear Daughter had moved to the other coast, and I asked her to measure herself, since she had been eating healthily and exercising like a fiend, and had dropped a size or two. Armed with the new measurements and a smaller, newly correct guage, I decided to drop one size and got to work. I kept checking my guage throughout, and it is perfect. I'm nearly done - I'm halfway through the owls. But as I was laying it out to photograph it this morning, it looked quite small to me... Yup. The hips are 31 instead of 34, and the body seems short. I don't have the heart or the time this morning to measure it. 
