Swatching for Vanilla Spice

Knitty's spring surprises are out and I am really liking a couple of them. First up is Vanilla Spice, a cute cardigan with a subtle "seed" stitch pattern. It's not quite seed stitch but close. I have been hauling around 6 skeins of Artful Yarns Fable in The Boy Who Cried Wolf (aka color 96) for the last three years and this year decided to actually use it. I saw this pattern and thought - hey, why not? I swatched and the unblocked measurements were pretty close...
...so I did a quick rinse/wring (note to self: this yarn doesn't really like being wrung out) and block, and re-measured. I'm close to spot on with the gauge so I'm going to go for it! The photo makes the swatch look really unevenly blocked but it isn't, I promise! It's also not dry yet :)
The colors are not accurate at all in this photo but you can tell how it is a 4-ply yarn, with each ply a different color. It's got a light blue (periwinkle), a lavender, and two shades of a kind of moss green. Very pretty!

I am going to try to add some waist shaping and I am undecided on whether to leave the pockets or not. I'm also not sure which size to cast on just yet - it'll either be Small or Medium according to the measurements, and since I can't conceive of being a size small I think I will go with the Medium. That means I don't have much extra in the way of yarn, and I have this idea that I would like a tiny bit extra length-wise, so ditching the pockets will give me a little bit more room for error with yarn quantity.