wip - dad's cabled raglan

(Doesn't a big 'ol sweater crammed onto circular needles make the most glamorous in-progress shot??) Against my better judgment, holiday knitting is in full swing around here! Oh, I really do like it. I just didn't know I liked it. I spent all day Sunday working on the cabled raglan sweater for my dad. I really like the yarn I'm using -- Elann Peruvian Sierra Aran. It knits into a pretty soft fabric and I love the heathered colors. Although the color I received was not quite the color I expected, so I'd order a shade card if I decided to use this yarn again. I also found a bunch of knots in the last skein I knit. Hm. Maybe I'll downgrade from "really liking" to simply "liking" this yarn. I'm using the top-down formula for the Incredible, Custom-fit Raglan Sweater. But I found the instructions for the collar to be kinda confusing. Well, maybe not confusing so much as sort of strange. The pattern has you knit back and forth on the collar before you knit in the round, so that the front will lay lower than the back and so that it actually fits over a person's head. All that make sense. (Especially the part about fitting over someone's head.) But, unless I'm misunderstanding the pattern, you just wind up with way more ribbing around the back of the neck than in the front, causing the collar to lean a bit toward the Star Trek side of things. So I ripped back and modified the collar (don't ask me how) so that the neckline would still lay lower in the front, but so that the ribbing would be an even width all the way around. It was a pain in the neck---no pun intended---and I'm hoping that it will look ok in the end. But it has been fairly smooth sailing since the collar fiasco. After several not-so-subtle e-mails to my father about his measurements, and harassing knit bloggers more talented than I about the amount of ease in men's garments, I think the fit should be pretty accurate. And I'm pretty comfortable with my pace so far, so I'm no longer worried about that impending Christmas deadline.

(I do plan on eating these words in late December.)