12/23/2010 Done! Except for bottom hem - just in time for my husband to wear it to his birthday dinner.

12/14/2010: Getting down to the wire here. I’ve had to knit a bit farther up the neck than the pattern calls for, because the original neck seemed far too big to have only 2” of ribbing (after the foldover). I’m a bit worried about how far down the neck shaping comes, as well. I bound off the neck and crocheted to stabilize the steek using Eunny Jang’s steek tutorial (it’s a bit massive, so I may try again with thinner yarn). I am also going to take Jon Shrouder’s suggestion to pick up the stitches before cutting the steek; the original Dale directions have you cut the steek and then knit the neck ribbing before you get around to picking up the placket stitches at the steek, which sounds like a bit of a recipe for disaster.

11/18/2010: Fortunately I was wrong about there being an error in the pattern. As of last night, I have finished the sleeves, joined it all together and begun knitting the yoke, yay! One month to go.

8/7/2010: Rather nervous about the prospect of an entire large sweater done with size 4 needles! Not to mention the need to steek and sew in a zipper. At least I’m doing the raglan version so I don’t need to steek the sleeves. My swatch came out at about 5 3/4 sts/in instead of 6 sts/in, but I am taking a chance and going with size L anyway, on the theory that the sweater itself is likely to come out at a slightly smaller gauge (It’s knitted in the round, the swatch is back and forth.) I do this with full recognition that if I guessed wrong I will need to frog all 278 stitches. I should have started with a sleeve, but didn’t realize that until after I’d finished casting on.