When it first appeared, in the Spring 2006 issue of Interweave Knits, the Sunrise Circle Jacket was almost instantly popular.

The attractive cut and interesting construction paired with attractive yarn and a free pattern made this pattern appealing to many a knitter. A knitalong sprung up. And people busily knit away on their jackets.

And they were finished

I've spent a great deal of time searching through finished pictures of the Sunrise Circle Jacket and I've concluded that this pattern is *perfect* for the tall, thin, narrow (non-curving) hipped woman with a 37 inch finished bust measurement. If you have two out of four of these physical qualities your chances of good results are 50/50 and if you've gotethree out of the four, you stand a good chance of your sweater turning out well. If you don't have any of the above qualities (like me) then, this pattern will not look good on you unless you are willing to do signifcant alterations.

Now, I am not out to trash this pattern, because I knit it myself. I loved the idea of this sweater enough to stick through many, many rows of frogging. I couldn't have done that without an extremely well written pattern by Kate Gilbert

Knit in the size this pattern was originally designed for, the pattern works pretty well. The problem comes in sizing this pattern up and down from the original. The clever jacket construction actually creates the sizing problem.

Normal practice for sizing patterns uses two proportions: one that controls length by altering the number of rows and one that controls width controled by the number of stitches. The semi-circle front and raglan sleeve are knit as one continuous piece which means that the length and width of the jacket fronts are created simultaneously, a big problem for traditional sizing methods. The designer has two options, then. Either completely re-write the pattern for each and every size from the ground up to make sure that the fit and the shape of the semi-circle are kept intact. Or just increase or decrease the length to until the appropriate width appears. Not suprisingly, Kate Gilbert chose the second option(...I don't blame her, who would want to do all that math 5 times?!). The result: a normal assortment of finished chest measurements accompanied by lengths that in no way reflect the proportions of the average human body. Case in point: the largest sized set of instructions produces a 33.25 inch sleeve from neckline to cuff (remember it's a raglan). Take out a measuring tape and measure that out. It's long, very long. I can't think of anyone with a sleeve that long....I'm sure they exist.. Intuitively it even looks too long:

Also, Ms. Gilbert thoughfully included darts in the waist in the back of this jacket. The length issue doesn't really come into play if you have no hips. because the dart shaping creates them for you wherever they land and you look fabulous and thinner than ever.

However, for those of us with curves, the extra length means it becomes much more likely that those darts are going to hit us at the widest part of our middle and make us larger.
(I hate posting this picture because the knitter thought her sweater fit her like a dream. But it doesn't! The darts are pulling at her tummy! This is "Fitting 101" kind of stuff. The purpose of darts is highlight the reality or illusion of a waist.)

Now, again I want to stress, if you are the size of the original design (37 inch bust) then darts are likely to sit correctly, like this:

So the question is, then, what do you do if you are not making the 37 inch chest version of this sweater and you still really really want to make and wear this sweater? I'll cover that in my next post!