Hmmm. Good point about the color. Also, thanks for sending me to the Knitty writer. There's an article where he deals with a child's sweater from 1912 which is constructed really similarly to this one (start at the back hem, knit up the back, and over the shoulders in two halves down to the bottom of the front hem), and I suspect it will be a good reference article in case I get stuck on things like turning the work and so forth. (I uh, also might have gotten really distracted by his blog, where he is currently working on Victorian wool speedo-style swimming trunks)

I'm beginning to suspect that I should probably use the finer yarn -- 6 sts/inch is more likely to be DK weight, from what I can find, but I need to experiment a bit.