Tinkering Elizabeth I Pullover

Some years ago, I did yarn swap with an accomplished knitter in Switzerland and acquired beautiful Camel Dunedin yarns. I knitted Elizabeth of York with some of them. I loved the way Dunedin shows off stitch pattern. If I were to classify this yarn, I would place it between fingering and sports weight, or almost sports weight but not quite as thick. Its texture is spongy and similar to Gems Merino. I would probably use it as a substitute for Dunedin.

With the remaining Dunedin, I decided to knit Elizabeth I Pullover, which I knew required some tinkering. I heard it is too large overall and the neck opening is too wide, in particular. I decided to make this pullover more fitted with zero or very scant ease all around. For that, 5 stitches were taken out at each side of the bodice. At the same time, I did not want to modify the beautiful center V-shaped design. In order to maintain the design, I decreased the number of stitches reduced along the raglan shaping. Note that these changes made on bodice pieces do not change the number of stitches along the top. So far so good. Next task was to make sleeves narrower. I decided that the raglan shaping for the sleeves do not need to match that of the bodice, and I took out 8 stitches at the center of each sleeves. I felt that reducing the neckband length by total of 16 stitches might not be sufficient and added a dart at the top of sleeves, reducing further 12 stitches for each sleeve, with the total of 40 stitches removed from the neckband. The photo below shows the center dart on the sleeve.



Note to self: I may have been better off matching the raglan shaping of the sleeves to that of the bodice, and increasing the center dart depth so that 16 stitches were removed at the center top, with 30 stitches in total decreased along the neckband.

This pullover is very elegant and relatively quick to knit. I would knit it again happily.