I'm not sure you can even really call this a sweater...it's not as though I'm intending it to be warm and cozy! I just wanted some new dressy thing for the holidays, and I've wanted something sapphire blue for a while.

As for the pattern, well, I'm following it loosely. The gauge of this yarn is quite different than the gauge the pattern calls for, so I'm using the stitch counts for a much smaller size, I had to completely recalculate the decreases (thank goodness I'm a math major!), and I knit the body in one piece. I'm also doing the sleeves top-down, and I'm planning a totally different edging. So, does that still count as the same pattern? I never quite know where to draw the line.

Here's the sweater with the body done, and one sleeve cap finished. Can't tell? That's because it's almost impossible to lay the sweater out in a manner that makes it look like a sweater, so I went for the "artistically piled knitting" look. I'm not worried - yet - because I tried it on before I started the sleeves, and it looks like it will work. But it really does take a lot of faith in your gauge swatch to see this growing pile of knitted fabric that's really only vaguely based on a pattern and not panic that it will either be huge or tiny! (I definitely had a few moments of panic.)