April 27: The knitting is complete, the ends are all woven in and now its in the wash.

For the most part I enjoyed knitting this. The instructions for the specialty stitches were clear and easy to follow. Most importantly, this fits without any funny gaps around the arms like so many tank tops have.

What I didn’t like was how the pattern for my size (L) had a gap of 4 extra stitches in the pattern to accommodate the stitch count. This is a pet peeve of mine - just because I’m making a larger size doesn’t mean I’m going to accept something that looks like I had to add stitches to make it fit. Since I wasn’t using the recommended yarn, I didn’t have quite the same gauge so I recalculated, adjusted the ease slightly and got rid of that gap.

Parts of this pattern read like it was originally developed for ‘flat’ knitting and later adapted to knit in the round - things like extra stitches in the chart, and an odd means of casting off for under the arms. Personally, I think it would have worked better to cast off all underarm stitches in one round and then split for the front and back rather than casting off some for the back, some for the front and then having to go back and reinforce the bind off at the end.