ski sweater

A while back, J asked me for a new ski sweater. (ok, so "a while" = "two years ago"). His old sweater predates our marriage (our last anniversary was "17"). It might be time for a new one. I showed him pictures of ski sweaters, and he picked this one, and picked his colorway (celery green for the body, and shades of green and tan for the colorwork).
I got started knitting (determined I need the smaller needle recommended, as yes I am still a loose knitter).
I had measured his old sweater and compared it to the measurements provided in the pattern and the overall measurements were pretty much identical. I didn't notice that the distance from the bottom of the hem to the underarm was different until I got enough knitting done on the body (in the round, bottom up, raglan style) to start looking for where I needed to start the colorwork. It was at this point that that I realized that the pattern called for the armscye to be set 1.5 inches higher than on his favorite old sweater.
Somehow I didn't think this would be acceptable, and on inquiry I found that this was the case.
I set the knitting aside to decide where I needed to recalculate, but at this point it was now March. Setting it aside meant that I didn't get back to it until May. Do you think I'm going to knit with Heilo yarn in a sweater done in the round (i.e. all in one piece) in May? No, I didn't think so either.
It sat. Last winter, winter came late. We had 60 degree temps until the end of January. There never was any good skiing - he didn't go once. And I still needed to do some calculations. I didn't get around to it until May. Yeah, right.
So. It's been sitting for a while. The other day I sat down and did the calculations I needed to do - it won't be hard, I just change the rate of the decreases from every second row to every third row and I should wind up with the exact rate of decrease his old sweater has.
I have to figure out where I'm putting the zipper on the raglan, since he wants to have the zipper from the drop shoulder sweater, but I have to do sleeves now before I finish the colorwork, and the zipper comes after that.
For such a color junky as I am, I really haven't done much colorwork. This is turning out pretty well for a first project. The picture looks odd because, following advice from several people, I turned the sweater inside out when I got to the colorwork. So far it doesn't seem to be drawing up too much.
I'm just hoping that the fact that I feel impelled to finish this project is merely a byproduct of the guilt I feel over letting it languish, and not an indicator (such as a wooley worm would be) that we are in for a hard cold winter.