I ripped the collar and reknit placing the short row turns along the slope of the V-neck. Much better. The collar does not have that funny bulge and neither does the upper chest. If you click on the second picture from the top you will see the whole back collar and how the short rows align with the V of the V-neck. The top picture shows how the front lays flat and does not have that pouchy area. The third picture down in after reknitting, the 4th picture is before reknitting. All of the pictures from the 4th down are before the collar was redone. Much nicer with the new collar.

Update - I figured out how to fix the pouchy fabric at the upper chest area. See my notes for my second D&S here.

Now I need to take this collar off and redo like the other one I knit.
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After spending hours reading other’s descriptions of how their cardigans turned out, looking at their pictures and studying the actual pattern, I am starting off a little different. It looks to me that on most of the cardigans that the back neck area stretches way too much. So I am using a tighter cast on - a cable cast on - and I am incorporating cable flare compensation. I have removed 12 stitches from the back cable and then have added them back in on the marker placement set up row. This is much nicer. The cast on edge is more firm and the cable does not splay at the neck edge.

Also, I notice that there seems to be quite a bit of extra fabric at the upper front neck area. I have removed all but 3 of the front neck stitches for the cast on and will compensate by working the V a little deeper to regain those stitches for the front body width.

Some of the directions are difficult to follow. I have decided to start both charts at the same time on the same row.

From this point further, I am not really following the pattern any more. I am using my daughters measurements as my guide to add bust shaping and waist shaping. Then there will also be pockets, nice deep pockets. More as we go.

I carried all of the cables through to the bottom edge of the ribbing. There is a cable design along the outer edge of both pockets and I added a cable to the cuffs in the same placement that you would use a button or cuff link.

One of my skeins was lighter than the others. I save it to near the end hoping that I would not have to use it. When it became apparent that I would have to use it, I started blending it in at the bottom third of the sleeves, worked the cuffs in the light yarn only, and then worked the rest into the collar/front bands. It came out nice.

Sarah loves the finished sweater, she says it is the best one I have made her so far. (out of many)