Knitting up the bolero actually used about 220g of the 4-ply wool (just over two balls). The remaining quantity marked as used includes the wool used in knitting up an extra left front!

26 Sep 2012: Endless trouble in fitting ribbing band. Sewed it on, pulled it off, tacked up half of it to prove that it was too short, marked seam points, measured the distances between seams, calculated that I needed to knit a full 56” (as versus short length advised in pattern), knitted more inches, sewed on halfway according to copied marks, got cold feet over extreme stretching in upper half and sewed rest with different tension which meant the two sides of the front didn’t line up. Decided I had been right the first time (to sew bottom corner without any tension to speak of) and unpicked second half. Redid certain sections for fourth or fifth time!

Final measurements used:

• 7” front centre back to side seam
• 12.5” side seam to start of yoke (stretched at start and finish of this section but not while going round corner)
• 6.25” yoke to shoulder seam
• 2.5” shoulder to nape

I think this may have stretched it a little too tight acros the back of the neck, though.

19 Sep 2012: Sewing up first sleeve. Slightly worried to find that I apparently cast off 13 stitches rather than 10 for the final shoulder decrease of the back, which means the front pieces don’t match exactly… hoping the ribbing band will cover up the discrepancy.

16 Sep 2012: 23” of ribbing band done, thanks to triple-bill of “Dr Who”, “The Falcon in Mexico” and “Downton Abbey”!

15 Sep 2012: Working the yoke on my replacement front - having taken care to make exactly the same ‘mistake’ when starting the neckline decreases as on the right-hand front this time!

13 Sep 2012: Finished second sleeve (having made and had to correct precisely the same errors at the top as on the first sleeve) and cast on for replacement left front. On reaching the end of the decreases, discovered that for some incomprehensible reason I had cast on for the second size and not the first….

6 Sep 2012: Just finished last increase on second sleeve: straight up to the armhole now.

31 August 2012: Started second sleeve (oops! forgot I was going to re-do left front first!)

26 August 2012: Tacked up for testing. Shoulders too wide :-(

25 August 2012: Finishing sleeve. I’m a bit puzzled by the instructions to decrease for the final row on the right side of the work using knit stitches when this section is all in reverse stocking stitch - ought it to be purled? - but Firefix has just crashed again and I can’t be bothered to restart it in order to post a question in the forums (which won’t admit NetSurf)….

12 August 2012: Working steadily up my first sleeve as it gets wider and wider - deferring re-knit on left front until later!

22 July 2012: Re-knitting top of right front for third time after I got the droplet pattern identical to the left front instead of mirror-imaged…

15 July 2012: Did a mammoth one-day session on right front and reached yoke pattern - book is somewhat confusing at this point since left and right fronts do not appear to correspond. Decided to go ahead anyway.

10 July 2012: Finished bolero back.

8 July 2012: Tension turns out to be fractionally too large horizontally while too small vertically (64 rows to 7 inches in place of 58 specified in pattern). Had to work an extra row of bobbles to get armholes 7in deep.

Decided to work patterned back from Lavenda droplet jumper in place of the plain back given for the bolero, as I’m not going to be wearing this as a set with the jumper. Finally worked out which ‘loop in row below’ I need to purl into in order to make the openwork pattern shown in the photo; unfortunately this means that I need to re-do the left front that I’ve already made, where this pattern is wrong! In my defence, I’ve only ever used this technique before when making socks, where the aim is to avoid holes rather than to create them….

30 June 2012: Finally got correct tension on my 6th attempt…. Decided to work 1st size, grading to second size at the armpits to get sufficient width across the shoulders.

For the back, we need to reduce 107 sts to 91 at armhole: cast off 5sts at beginning of 2 rows, then dec 1st at each end of next 3 rows - reduced by 16sts overall.

For the two front pieces, we need to reduce 53sts to 43 including the two which are lost via neck edge decreases at this point: cast off 5 sts at beginning of row, then dec. 1st at armhole edge of next 3 rows while at the same time decreasing 1st at neck edge of next and following 4th row. End with wrong-side row before starting to work chart design.