Sad sweater, or how not to fix raglan increases

Poor sweater, what have I done to you?

This is a sad story about a top-down raglan sweater, which had an "accident" and has now become a bottom-up raglan sweater. Let me start from the beginning...

A while back I finally started on my husband's sweater. I decided on bulky yarn and a top-down raglan recepie for calculating my own gauge. So I measured my tall and skinny husband, I measured my gauge swatch and started knittting. I made him try the sweater on again and again, and everything seemed just fine. Until the sweater body and one sleeve were finished. That's when I noticed I had made way too many raglan increases - the armpit of the sweater was at least two inches too low, giving the sweater a batwing-kind of sleeve look and loads of extra fabric at the armpit.

My husband said he'd be fine with it, but I thought it was plain ugly. So I browsed the internet and Ravelry forums, and actually got some really good advice on how I could snip a bit under the armpit, knit a bit and that way fixing the mistake without ripping the whole sweater apart. I printed out the guidance, waited a week and gathered my guts to do it - and did it.

Needless to say, it didn't work out. I snip and knit, darn and snip, unravel and try to put the damn thing together again. No, this armpit was a Humpty-Dumpty in disguise and I couldn't put him together again, at least not better than looking twice worse than before the operation.

I cried. I stomped my feet. I cried a bit more. And then I got my Elisabeth Zimmermann "Knitting Without Tears" (!) book and read on how to make a bottom up-raglan with the percentage system. You basically start from the hem (make a gauge swatch and calculate the numbers to cast on from there), and all the other numbers of stitches are per cent of this number.

So. I stop crying, put on some Static X and cut the body of the sweater off. Then I cut the one good sleeve off. The rest -the raglan part- I rip. R.I.P, top down sweater! I now have a body and half a sleeve, all I need now is the other sleeve and then I can join them together in the round, and do the raglan bottom-up.

And this is where we are now. I feel really sorry for the poor top-down, my husband is quite sceptical of the sweater's transformation and I'm not 100% confident either... but it's a start. I didn't have to rip the whole thing apart. I got to listen some good music again. I got use of the book which I so wanted a year ago, but haven't used much since.

Now just keep your thumbs up for me please!

What would you have done in this situation? Have you succeeded in repairing a wonky raglan? Have you ever cried over a sweater (please tell me I'm not the only one!)?