Knitting Conundrum

Not sure what to say to that introduction. Now you've all seen my cleavage, is there anything left to share?

Yesterday I finished - ta da! - the jumper I'm knitting my husband for last Christmas. Shut up. Here's the pattern. I've knitted it in the round, and grown on the sleeves (why sew seams?). I also had to reduce the number of stitches going around the body; my gauge was correct, but when I started knitting (the smallest size) it looked like it was going to be enormous.

It's knitted in 100% Alpaca from Bendigo Woollen Mills and feels very soft and beautiful. It's a nice colour, too.

So I finished it and he tried it on and promptly complained that the neck was too high. He's got a thing about feeling clothing pressing against his throat. (Maybe he was strangled by clothing in a former life. Maybe he was Isadora Duncan!)

I'd already lowered it from its original position, since two tiny triangular gussets at the sides of the neckline don't make much of a difference to a front neck that just goes straight across from the shoulder. But not enough, it seems.

So I unpicked the collar, and was then faced with unpicking the front. Not so simple. It's bound off together with the back at the shoulders, plus I knitted on the sleeves by picking up stitches along the armhole. So unpicking the front would involve cutting the sleeves off (and grafting them back on again later). Pooh to that, says I.

Lying in bed this morning, I pondered the problem. I have decided that I will cut straight down through the centre front neck about 3 1/2 cm, keeping the side triangular gussets in place, then unpick and bind off just the stitches that need to go, in a nice curve, and somehow weave in all the ends of rows at the edges of the neck line. Then I can pick up the stitches along the neck and knit the collar as normal.

Wish me luck.