Sherrill: All that ends well

Similar to my brother's sweater that I made last year, I made a cardigan revamped out of a vintage pattern.  The "Sherrill" twin sweater set pattern has been modified slightly to become (see below):

Notes on the sweater:

I knit the body all together with size 2 circular needles, not in the round.  I did include some shaping, drawing in the cardigan on each side by a few stitches around the waist.  The fronts and the back were split at the armholes, and I knit all three pieces separately.  At the shoulder, I grafted the fronts to the back.  Then, I picked up the stitches from around the armholes and knit each sleeve in the round.

For the finishing, I first started with the button band.  This was tricky because I knew I wanted it to be fairly solid.  At first I was going to knit it double stranded, but I decided against it in the end.  Instead, for each row, I picked up two stitches, and I knit the band in a k1, p1 ribbing.  Once I made it long enough, I cast off with a tight i-cord, at the same time decreasing the number of stitches on the band in half.  (This may have sounded confusing, but it really isn't, and it turned out just as I wanted.)

The last step was the neck.  The end!