Demands

I had strict instructions; The BFF said that if I am going to design a tank top for her that the pattern must be able to be knit in the round because she "no likey" to seam.  EVER.  But I know that she is actually very good at it because I had her knit and seam one of my designs once and the seaming was so perfect that I have a shrine built in honor of her seaming prowess.   

Here she is.  All 184 stitches in the round.

 In this post, I mentioned I got as far as the sketch and swatch for this design, but it turns out that I actually have gotten a bit further in the process.  I was going through some old files on a flash drive and discovered that I got so far as to have this design charted in Excel. I learned to use Excel to chart my knitting designs using some of Marnie MacLean's blog posts.  If you're interested, head on over there and get some learnin'.

She describes using Excel for charting colorwork in this tutorial, but I've substituted colored squares for Stitch Mastery Knitting Fonts.  I usually chart an entire sweater on Excel, and this has helped me tremendously in being able to see the garment stitch by stitch.  It also helps me understand and plan for how increases and decreases will interrupt complex patterns like cables and lace; a lesson I learned while taking a free "design-along" course by Shirley Paden over in the We Love Shirley Paden Group on Ravelry.   

I spent last night making changes to the original design. You can see a bit of it in the sketch above the swatch.  

At first, only the front right side of the tank top was supposed to have this cable and lace pattern.  Now, I want it to wrap around to the right back.  That involved re-calculating the number of stitch repeats.  I am satisfied with my calculations, so, as you can see in the first picture, I cast on.