I decided to use the 4.5mm hook for the peacock sweater.  That's also the size I use to make my Starling Handbags. It seems I have a preference for the 4.5mm hook.  Maybe it's my lucky hook?

I made a huge swatch of the peacock stitch pattern so I could get a gauge.  I determined that the motif is 2 inches across and 2.75 inches tall.  For half-a-second I considered doing swatches in *all* my hook sizes to see if one would come out in even inches tall/wide ... but that's just too ridiculous to do just to make the grid paper pattern easy.

I measured myself ... chest, waist, hips ... and the distance between them ... and charted it out on my graph paper.  Then I started with the v-neck.  This is going to be a pull-over.  I figured out where I'd need the diamond-shaped motifs to fall to put the v-neck where I wanted it.  Then I made the top and bottom circles of the motif on the graph paper (argh, 2.75" tall motifs!).

Whew!

I'm not 100% about where the v-neck and arm holes are, but since I'm making this from the top down, I'll adjust as I go.  I'm also not sure if I have enough yarn to do the motif for the whole sweater, so it might just be peacock on the front and I'll do something else (swiss cheese?) on the back and the sleeves.  We'll see.

One tricky thing I had to figure out was what row to start with.  The motif has 6 rows, and I needed to do just one inch of them before I got to the top of the motif.  That's where the big swatch came in handy.  I think I'll keep the big swatch intact until the very end because it looks like it's going to come in handy a lot.

(and, you can see that I've already adjusted the neck line ... I'm actually playing catch up here on the blog)