I chose to knit the sweater on larger needles (5mm), so I reduced the number of pattern repetitions to 20.
I made the neck smaller and added an extra set of increases (though I could have made it smaller, in retrospect, as the weight of the yarn pulls the sweater out). To lower the front neck, I added 6 rows of short rows in the back; the front repeats start without the “stem” portion of the motif.
After trying the sweater on when nearly done the yoke, I found it was already the length it needed to be (due to the larger gauge) so I removed a few rows of the motif so that I could add the short rows to the back. The yoke is still 10” so longer than what I would usually have in a yoke.
To improve the fit, I undid the cast on edge and the neck ribbing and then reduced the number of stitches ( using k2tog or p2tog from 68 to 52) so that the neck sits closer to the base of my neck.