I am loving knitting this. If only I didn’t have other projects to finish up.

Front and back panels are quick knits. A bit concerned that my stitches don’t look very even in spots. The yarn is lovely, but a bit sticky. Have to work harder to keep my tension even. For a shorter garment (I’m only 5’ tall), I knit a total of 12 lateral braids vs 15. It may be a tad too short: 13 may have been better.

Onward to the welts! Keeping fingers crossed that they won’t be that difficult. Pattern instructions not helpful.

Once I understood welt construction, it wasn’t that difficult. Tedious, though, with so many stitches and fine yarn. After picking up & knitting stitches along the panels (joining panels with CO stitches – backward loop CO), I threaded a lifeline through the row. When ready to construct the welt, I placed 25-30 stitches at a time on a US 1 dpn to knit those stitches tog with row 4 stitches creating the welt with row 5. (If that makes any sense.) This made it easy to check the alignment as I went along. If I got off track, I only had to knit back a few stitches. Checked completed welt (made sure each stitch was a k2tog) and found one dropped stitch, marked it, easily fixed it when purling back. The stickiness of the Spinni helps keep a dropped stitch in place.

Note on CO used to join the panels: at first I thought I should have used a knitted CO, but after purling the first row, the shoulder looks great.

Whew! Glad that first welt is finished.

To decrease the amount of fabric on the sides, I knit 6 stitches rather than 4 before turning when knitting the short rows. Knitting the sides and finally the bottom edging seemed to take forever. I added 2 lateral-stitch rounds to the bottom for a total of eight. (See mailee’s Lemon.)

End notes: I didn’t stretch the top when I blocked it. Simply pulled it into shape and let it dry. May have used a few pins to hold the welts straight. One side ended up with a crinkled look. Pretty sure one or more of my cats took a walk across it. Thought the blowing fan would keep them off the garment while it dried. Nope.

I want less pull where the sides meet the bottom edge and some space between the lateral braids on the bottom (picture in amimono booklet shows more space), so I will try blocking the top with some stretch to try for a bit more length and additional width in the bottom edge. If that doesn’t work, I can rip out the bottom and rework. Oh joy.

Decided I am being way too picky. The top looks fine and is very wearable. I’m sure this is one knit I’ll enjoy!