Progress on the Central Park Hoodie

I'm working on the back of my Central Park Hoodie, and I've finished the ribbing. Instead of doing 4 inches of ribbing, I did 4.5, because I don't really want a cropped sweater. There's nothing worse than that rush of cold air on your back when you sit down and there's a gap of exposed flesh between your sweater and your jeans. Like most people who make the CPH, I've added a little bit of length to the sweater to avoid that eventuality. I actually enjoy doing 2x2 ribbing, which I know makes me a knitting freak, but I'm glad it's done and I'm moving on to the cables. Yay cables! It's been more than a year since I've done anything with cables, and I'm quite excited at the prospect.

So that's great. But before I move on to the cables, I need to figure out what I'm going to do about waist shaping. The Central Park Hoodie doesn't have any shaping at all. It has ribbing at the bottom, and then it's the same diameter for the rest of the sweater. I am inclined to believe that's not a flattering look on me, because I'm quite curvy. Actually, that's not exactly right. For the most part, I'm not very curvy at all. I just have big boobs. I don't think that boxy sweaters are a good look on the big-boobed, so my plan was to add some waist shaping.

In an effort to do that, I went through and measured all of the sweaters that I own and like. (None of these are hand-knit sweaters, mind you, because the CPH will be my first sweater.) Now, none of my clothes fit perfectly, because of my odd shape. Part of the reason that I started knitting was in an effort to finally get my hands on sweaters that fit my big-boobed, small-framed body. But when I measured my favorite sweaters, I realized that they are all 36", which is my bust measurement, and none of them have any waist shaping. And that makes me wonder if maybe I don't need to add any waist shaping to my CPH.

However, when I looked at my most CPH-like sweater, I realized that in a sense it does have waist shaping. Like the CPH it has several inches of 2x2 ribbing at the bottom. Unlike the CPH, the body of the sweater is stockinette. However, there's a panel of 2x2 ribbing that continues up the sides of the sweater to the armholes. I think that allows the sweater to expand where it needs to expand and contract where I'd like the sweater to be a little narrower. The CPH has 14 stitches of stockinette on the sides, and I'm thinking about replacing it with 2x2 ribbing, for quick and easy waist shaping.

I can't decide whether that's crazy. I am a totally inexperienced sweater knitter, and I've never seen ribbing recommended as a way to achieve waist shaping. It feels like going out on a huge limb. But part of me thinks that nothing ventured nothing gained and that I know that I'm the kind of knitter who enjoys figuring things out by trial and error. So I might go ahead and do it, and if it doesn't work out then I'll just rip it out and start again. I think I'm going to post a thing on Ravelry just to see if people think it's a really crazy idea.