FO: pullover with top front ruching

This is a basic pullover made from an improvised pattern. The yarn is Rowan Purelife Revive, which is a nice silk/cotton/rayon blend made from recycled fibers. I've always liked these pullovers with ruching around the yoke, One pattern is the Ruched Yoke Tee from Interweave Knits, and another pattern is Molly Ringwald.. However, I don't really like having the gathered stitches all around the yoke. They tend to make the top of the sweater fit too loosely, and all that yarn makes it a bit bulky. Also, for some reason, I never liked the purl stitches used to separate the gathered sections. For some reason, that just gave the sweaters too much of a "home made" look, and I don't even know why I think that. I always wanted to put the gathered area just on the front section, but I couldn't think of what to do for the separation rows until a knitting friend told me about the lateral braid stitch, which has Estonian origins. After that, I was good to go! I really like how the horizontal stitches provide such a sharp dividing line between the gatherings. I did the stitch without doing the increase at the start.

The rest of the sweater is just your basic raglan top-down pullover. I added some short rows to raise the back neckline a bit, and the neckline is finished with a row of single crochet followed by a row of reverse single crochet.