How to fix a jumper

So I've managed to knit my jumper massively too wide. A poor combination of tired and stressed out knitting, yarn substitution and mod to knit in the round. It has gone from size XS to size XL.

Option1: Frog - not my first choice as I really don't want to knit with this yarn again.
Option 2: Gift - find sumo sized friend and give them a jumper
Option 3: Fix - this is only possible because the yarn the I have used is 100% wool.

Fixing it...
The normal route would be to undo the side seams and steek but as this was done in the round it is not that easy.
Other option would be to put a zipper up the front but as this has a huge cable centre piece, which is the only nice thing about this pattern, that's not going to happen.

So I've decided to steek out two panels from under the arms.

First I've measured to find out the difference between the actual size and the one I need. I need to take out at least two 6" panels from either side.
I've gone to the centre of the underarm and used contrasting thread to mark out the side of the panels approx 3" from the centre. I've also measured the armhole to make sure it will still go on after the panel is taken out! You could go straight to the steek but I felt I needed this extra step.



This is a great way to use up the odd bits of wool I've got.
Next I've gone one stitch over and done a crocheted steek parallel to the contrasting thread on each side. For detailed guidance on how to do this see here

Then (deep breath) I've cut the panel out and redone a seam using mattress stitch.

As this has now altered the construction substantially away from the pattern I have to change the arms, not yet knitted.

I'll be using the excellent guidance of StickChick to calculate and pick up for the sleeves...
"2” around at the top of the sleeve * 4 sts/inch = 48 sts (so you would want to pick up 48 sts)
4” around at the bottom of the sleeve * 4 sts/inch = 16 sts

Now you know you want to go from 48 sts down to 16 sts. 48-16 = 32 sts to remove.

Length of sleeve is 12”. You’ll need to remove 32 sts over the course of 12” of knitting. Personally, I like to have the full size of my sleeve go until almost my elbow as I find the taper of my arm really kicks in around the elbow. So I’d say I only want my decreases to be done over 8” (or whatever the length of your sleeve is from about 1” above the elbow down to your wrist).

32 sts need to be removed over 8”. This means you need to remove 4 sts every inch. I like to remove sts in pairs, so I’d break that down further to 2 sts every half inch.

Using this example you’d work as follows:
Pick up 48 sts, knit for 4”. Decrease 2 sts (one at the beginning and one at the end of the row) every half inch until you get to 16 sts. Work sleeve to desired finished length."

I have photos of everything I did but they are not loading at the moment so I will come back and edit them in when my lovely IT support person comes home.