Rip it, ribbit

Sometimes, when you've slaved over something, then taken it out and re-slaved a couple of times, and you're still not happy with it, even after you've forced yourself to wear it a couple of times and then tried to ignore it, there's nothing left to do besides froggit (you knitters out there know what I'm talking about). So, we start with something like this:(trust me, it may look ok, but it was really horrible). As a beginning knitter, I knit this sweater in several pieces, then stitched together. This, in my opinion, is the worst way to knit anything. You're supposed to knit a sweater. That's why it's called knitting, not sewing. I knit and re-knit the sleeves on this thing two or three times before just giving up and wearing it. Once or twice. Then it disappeared into the black hole in my closet.

So one day, I was innocently going about my business, when I saw this book. And it had this sweater on the front...and the sweater spoke to me and said, "knit me!" and I thought that it looked like the perfect pattern for this particular yarn that I had, that just happened to be used at the moment by a very un-savory sweater, and all was lost after that. So I started ripping...and picking out #$@&!! stitches. Like so:
Here is the infamous sweater about a third of the way un-done:So now I'm knitting my little heart out, and ignoring the fact that I don't quite know all the techniques used in the pattern (neck steek?) (using a sewing machine??).
I just fell in love with the pattern and am totally convinced that when I'm done the sweater will look exactly like the one in the picture, and will make me look exactly like the model in the picture (and I'll magically know how to surf) ...right?