Thanks so much everyone for helping me through my latest crisis! Since you pretty much unanimously confirmed my doubts about the purple, I'll be ripping out the green/purple swatch this afternoon and going with the all green version. Some of you asked if I should even consider the monochromatic version, given that I might run out of yarn. I'm just going to go for it! I plan to do the second sleeve and then see how much yarn is left before I tackle the front. I think the front could be done with 2 full skeins. If there's too little, I'll try to do what Leigh suggested, and purchase some more yarn close in color to the green I already have, so the cable does stand out like I wanted but the effect is more subtle.

And don't worry about the inner knitting masochist. She has been appeased. I cast on 198 stitches for the second Dale sweater and after a couple of hours, I'd managed to finish a few miniscule rows. This should keep the masochist happy for a while!

Oh, and for any Knitsmiths out there, yes that is a different color from the 198 stitches and 5 rows I did on Sunday. I had mistakenly followed the pattern info for the alternate colorway. So for those of you counting along at home, that's three weeks in a row that everything I did at my knitting group had to be ripped out. Next week, no knitting - I'm bringing finishing work!