Candy-ing along... nervously

I sure wish I knew someone who had worked with this Rowan Cotton yarn successfully. I'm almost ready for wash day for the Cotton Candy cardigan and I'm nervous. The instructions say to wash all the pieces before assembly, so that the shrinkage takes place before you sew the seams. Sounds familiar from sewing, right? But it appears that the instructions want me to sew the button band to the front *before* washing. ??? Won't that seam shrink, too? Why is it OK to sew that one but not the side seams? That's one bit of nerves.

The second bit of nerves has to do with a pattern mod, which is pure hubris, I'm sure. I am attempting to do the collar using a "pick up & knit" method rather than a "knit and attach later" method. Why? Because after my Sally Melville class on buttonholes and picked up edges in January, I've done two picked up collar edges which are just gorgeous, and I want that result for this garment, shrinking be damned.

So I'm sewing up the top 2 inches of each shoulder seam to accommodate my picked up collar. If they shrink funny, I'll only have 2 inches to pick out. I still have 2 more shorty seams to sew and I have to knit the right buttonhole band and the collar. Here's my progress as of last night:

Oh, and look what I've been reading ths weekend, a suprise copy of "At Knit's End", sent by my Mom in my spouse-o's birthday box from Amazon. It arrived on Thursday and I gobbled it up over the weekend. Stephanie Pearl-McPhee is a fabulous writer with such a personal tone and a lovely sense of humor. I was particularly pleased to find quotes from my favorite cartoon The Tick and mathematician Paul Erdos along with some of the more usual suspects (Confuscious, Elizabeth Zimmerman, Erma Bombeck, Dave Barry). If anyone else wants to read the book, I'd be happy to lend it out.

Lastly, I have a late addition to the Bias Betty story: a photo of the debut appearance of Betty as part of a work outfit last Thursday: