Progress Report

I've been knitting almost non-stop (aside from sleeping and eating) mainly because I'm glued to CNN watching all the debates and stump speeches. Exciting stuff, any way you look at it!

Anyway, I am pleased with the body of the coat so far:
I tried the diminished cable directions from the VK pattern, but first I had to adjust it since my cables are half the size. And then I realized that I preferred doing it a different way, namely rather than crossing 5 sts over 5 sts, I crossed them, but then knit them together. Hard to describe, but I'll try: If you number each stitch 1 through 10, then I knit st #1 together with st #6, #2 with #7, #3 with #8 and so on. It looks just like all the other cable cross-overs, but you end up with 5 sts rather than 10. After that I decreased 2 sts per cable every other row until that particular cable was gone. I eliminated two cables from each side:














Here's a detail:













Also, I chose to use the tubular cast-on method, and to begin knitting the body first. Then I went back and picked up the selvedge sts with size 10.5 circular needles, increasing a st every 7 sts. Then I knit the rib down 3 inches. I did this because I prefer the cast-off edge to the cast-on edge: