It's Tempting to do Math

So… good idea or bad idea….

I started to swatch Tempting II in the ribbing that the pattern calls for because I’m that insane… and I don’t think I like how loose the fabric is on this thin of a yarn – especially because as written the gauge for the pattern is pretty stretched out. So I’m going to go down a needle size to 6’s and re-gauge the whole thing with the ribbing not as stretched out… throw in like a half-inch of negative ease to make the pattern close fitting and I should be ok right? Does that sound like an awful idea? I’ve never changed the gauge for a pattern before… it’s just a lot of math right? I can handle math…

Then my other idea… I think I want to add a little shaping. I know that the stretchy yarn combined with the ribbing will make it fit no matter what… but you see I’m REALLY an hourglass… and shirts that are fit to my chest generally look like bags on me. And I’m worried that if I knit this straight then it’s going to look bad b/c it will be stretched within an inch of it’s life across my chest and then baggy across my waist. Neither of which is very flattering. I added shaping to the Ribbon X-back I knit awhile ago and it came out GREAT. (yeah.. that was a whole other story – I knit the whole thing to the pattern and it looked awful… like I was wearing a sack of ribbon yarn. I had to frog and re-knit the whole thing!) It fits me perfectly. Here's a shot of the shaping:



And a picture of it on:

I think I may print this one out and hang it on the 'fridge as motivation to stop with the eating. Holy backfat batman!

One of the huge advantages to knitting clothes is that I can custom fit them to me (as a girl who is shy of 5’3 and curvy it’s rare I find clothes that really fit me well)….I’m nervous about the shaping in the ribbing pattern, though… but I just have to pair the increases and decreases so that on the next row my ribbing is the same…I think….

I can do this right?

I think all of this math may allow me to qualify for this team: