I am using an 18 stitch old shale/feather & fan pattern for the hem. That will give me a scalloped bottom, which will be nice.

I CO 180 stitches with size 5 needles & I am getting 22 stitches & 32 rounds to 4”, so basically following the directions for the XS to get a S/M.

Oh I am so stupid, I apparently cannot divide by two. I had divided for the front & back & wondered why I didn’t have enough stitches after doing just the beginning of the sleeve bind offs. Well, I didn’t have the two halves divided evenly & had done all the increases & decreases at the wrong place. They looked really crappy anyway, so I ripped back to where I had started the decreases & this go round, I am not including waist shaping.

I stopped doing bind offs for the sleeves when I got to 64 stitches left & 12” across. I was at row 44 when I had 6.5”. For the straps, I knit 23, did NOT break yarn, BO 18, knit 23. I BO 8 stitches for each strap (15 stitches left) & did 8 rows. Since I ended up at the neck edge after doing the first strap, I used a steel crochet hook (marked 4) to slip stitch across to the other strap instead of breaking the yarn. Since I was working from the WS, I captured just the outward facing edge of the knit stitches to make it look nice. I put the last loop on the needle & knit 2 together for the first BO stitch.

I shaped the front armholes the same as the back, leaving 64 stitches & getting 3.5” at row 24. For the neck, knit 21, BO 22, knit 21. BO until I had 15 stitches left & knit to row 52 to get 7.5” & match the back straps. After I did the second 3 needle BO, I used the working yarn to crochet around the neckline.

For the sleeves, i did 16 short rows after the initial 4, about 3”. I did the finishing ITR. First I did the sleeve edge with two WS knit rounds, but when I started doing the BO, I thought it looked too heavy. I took off the second round & BO after just one round of knit on the WS.

I picked up 114 stitches around the neckline & did just two purl rounds before binding off.