Next we submitted sketches of our sweater ideas to Shirley. We then began a blizzard of swatches. What yarn to use? What color? What needle size? Knitting instructors always tell you how crucial it is to swatch before beginning a project. You will be astounded how many more swatches--the bigger, the better--you need to make when you are designing your own pattern, rather than following one. So much to figure out! I even proved to myself, once and for all, that various colors of the same yarn may vary in gauge and behave differently. The biggest challenge for me, once my fingers and brain had memorized the cable pattern I had chosen, with cable twists going across the piece every right-side row (what was I thinking?), was figuring out the transition of the rib and cable border to the main cable pattern. So many issues arose: how to make the stitch counts work together, how to avoid rippling, how to make the increases invisible, how to make it fit. More swatches and more frogging followed. We posted pictures of our swatches on Ravelry and camaraderie developed among the DAL5 members.