Originally started with a long tail cast on but frogged six rows in because the colors weren’t lining up nicely. I did a provisional crochet cast on with cotton thread (the black at the bottom) and it’s all purty now.

I’m finding this yarn surprisingly (for a natural fibers snob) enjoyable to knit, though a bit splitty in the decreases. It has a polished cottony feel and the sweater fabric is nice and stretchy. I’d definitely knit more of it.

4/18/12: Just needs buttons. I have some flower buttons (pic 3) I will probably use but want to take the sweater to check other buttons before I commit.

Notes:

Buttonholes are double wrapped yarn over for nice, round holes.

I saved the last stitch (without cutting the yarn) after the main bind off on a stitch marker so I could use it to single crochet around the neck.

I put the stitches from the provisional cast on back on the needles and bound off purlwise before I sewed the sleeve seams.

For the sleeve seaming, I sewed the last purl bump on each vertical garter ridge to the Vs of the horizontal bound off stitches on the wrong side.