Knit back with US 7. Thinking the knit may be too loose. Trying again with US6.

Reverted to US 7. Knitting fronts without waist decreases (I will finish cardigan first, and if waist shaping is needed, I will take in the side seams with the sewing machine.)

I should have chosen two significantly different colourways--these are only slightly different, so the stripes aren’t very clear.

Had to get a second skein of Main Colour. Sigh. That increases the cost of this cardi by 50%, even though I only needed about 5 or 10% more yarn. :|

Finished! I love that this yarn is so stretchy & springy--it’s very forgiving on the fit.

Finally followed my own advice about always making the button holes smaller than you think you should. The pattern calls for binding off 2 stitches for each button hole but I only bound off 1. They would have been WAY too big otherwise. However, they are hard to find! I might just leave this buttoned up and pull it on over my head…too many damn buttons to do up and undo all the time anyway. :) I had trouble lining the button holes up with each stripe, so I gave up and tried to bind them off every 6th row or so. They still came out fairly unevenly spaced but it’s the kind of thing only I will ever notice, I’m sure.

I added one extra stripe to the end of each sleeve after the fact, as they tended to ride up and look too short. Better with a little extra length.

I didn’t do the fold-up hem at the bottom; just added a regular old garter stitch hem like the button bands.

If I did this again I would omit several rows at the top of each sleeve…they come to quite a long, narrow point at the top of the shoulder and I find this unnecessary. There’s too much extra room there, and you can see how this makes them stick up a bit in the last photo. I would bind off the sleeves about 5 or even 10 rows earlier. I guess the big problem with that would be that the stripes would no longer match up with the front & back, so I’m not sure what the best approach would be.

I used the sewn bind-off on the front edging/button bands, which I had never heard of before, but will likely use again in situations where the bind off needs to be stretchy. It’s easy to do but takes a long time. But even though it has a fair bit of give, it still came out quite tight. I would be careful not to pull the yarn tightly on each stitch--leave it a bit loose to allow for more stretch if needed.