I Need A Man

to model this Dad sweater. (why, what were you thinking? Sniggering at the back there. Minds out of the gutter, people)

I am beginning to convince myself it may be too short in the body. But, I am not certain, for the following reasons:

My Dad is not a tall person. He's only about 5' 8 1/2", but broad.
He's fairly short-backed, like me.
This is a yoke sweater, so the sleeve placement is kinda weird compared to say, a set-in sleeve.
The yarn will grow widthways when I block, but lengthways not so much (going on the swatch and stitch/row gauge).

I've resorted to taking it off the needles (I just attached the sleeves...that's a LOT of stitches on a thread to pick up again), pinning it down and eyeballing it.

Still eyeballing. It's starting to eyeball me right back.

EZ reckons allow 1/4 of the body width as the yoke, which on this is 12". Add that to the 16" I already have in length, and that's 28", which is 1" over what Mum measured his favourite sweater as being. So, if anything it should be longer.

But it really doesn't look very long. I'm now considering knitting it up, blocking it, measuring it then gifting it to Dad with the hems un-knitted (I was doing them at the end anyway) so if I need to add any length at least I won't have to rip the hems out. Though if I do need to knit down, there's gonna be a funky line in the hems because of the way I did the cast-on. Maybe ribbing instead if I have to go that route...I can keep the Scottish Tweed 4-ply for me then ;-)

Well, if all else fails, if it doesn't grow too much widthways in the wash, I guess I will have knitted myself a seamless yoke...unless I meet a 48" chested very squat guy with a thing for woolly jumpers.

~*~