Nihon Vogue - Aran Sweater complete!

Happy Birthday greetings to my dear friend Naomi today!
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Or perhaps thousands upon thousands of stitches? It has been difficult to muster up desire to knit recently because it has been so darn blistering hot. Our thickest, wooliest Nihon Vogue projects seemed to coincide with the warmest weather on record in the Pacific Northwest. The Gansey. The Aran. The Yoke. All of mine done up in wool or some "7 times warmer" blend of. I joined Rob and Whimsy at the lake last week one evening for a picnic and a chance to cool off. Whimsy "lives" for swimming to retrieve the water kong Rob throws for her. Boaters and swimmers surrounding us were enjoying refreshing activities in the water. Where was I? I was sitting in a lawn chair with a hot bundle of alpaca-wool in my lap! Diligently working on the short rows for the aran collar. The people around me must have thought I was as wacky as the elderly gentleman who was sitting in a lawn chair at waters edge catching nothing but sinewy weeds.
I made this Aran sweater as a gift for Marilyn, my mother in law. She is slender and frail and I wanted to make something that would keep her warm in the winter but didn't have too much weight or bulk to it. The yarn is luscious and one of my all time favorites to knit with. I just wish it was easier to find in local yarn stores - the color palette is remarkable and the yarn is so soft! It is a 50-50 blend of alpaca and wool called Lana D'Oro from Cascade Yarns. I chose the lattice like cable pattern because it reminded me of Marilyn's garden trellis. She is an amazing gardener! I modified the trellis cable pattern to add an additional 1/3 of the width for the back pattern. I then divided this in half to get each set that is on the front of the sweater. In order to ensure that each pattern alongside the button bands were reverse images of each other, I had to trace the backside of the pattern by putting it up against a window and then converting those symbols to cable stitches. This way the stitch patterns are not the "same" on the front but rather exact "mirror" images of each other. So far so good.
Arans are my favorite style of sweater to knit and this one was no exception. I did 2x2 ribbing with invisible cast on and bind off that had been taught in Nihon Vogue Year 1. New learnings for this sweater were the saddle shoulders in which the pattern design on the *almost* center of the sleeve continues up over the shoulder to the neck. Almost center because the pattern is shifted forward a bit so that it appears to be centered when the sweater is worn. I decided to take on the task of doing an optional collar because I wanted Jean's guidance on how to do it correctly and there isn't many projects left in Year 2 in which a collar can be incorporated. I have not liked knitting collars in the past - mostly because it would end up the same length all the way around. In order for it to be long enough in the back to form an appropriate sized collar stand, the front collar points are very long and resemble something out of the 1970's. The answer to this dilemma is short rows! I picked up stitches around the neck, went back to the shoulder, turned and knit to the opposite shoulder, turned and then did 7 stitch increments of short rows on each side, back and forth, for the remaining portion of the collar. Amazing how short rows can make a collar look so good! I then picked up along the collar and sweater body seam to knit a 1 cm long facing. I sewed that down using Jean's whip stitch method for securing. Arlene, Phyllis and I have all done collars and are so pleased with the end result using facing. It makes the sweater look finished and dare I say professional? No more naked collar seams for us! I sewed on 10 buttons & backing buttons and called it "DONE". I really like the sweater but in my self critical way, decided I would have made a minor change had it been possible. I was quite focused on the widths of the cables bordering the trellis cable pattern (they all were 4 row repeats). If I were forced to re-design this sweater I would make one of those 3 cables an 8 row repeat but same width. All in all, a fantastic Aran experience and one in which I learned techniques I plan to use again and again.