Essential Tank

Essential Tank (1)
Originally uploaded by JRoKnits

Another chapter in the saga that is choosing the correct size...yet this one appears to be a success!

It's the Essential Tank from Custom Knits by Wendy Bernard. It is awesome!

I bought some Knit Picks Shine Sport in Violet from a fellow Raveler - 7 skeins to be exact. I don't even remember what I intended to make with it at first, but it couldn't have been anything that great. The yarn sat in my stash box FOREVER and was knit/crocheted/knit/frogged multiple times.

Until I got around to swatching for the Essential Tank, a design that really stood out to me in the book.

I labored over the decision of size. Now intellectually, I know that I'm really not overweight, but you see, I'm about 15 pounds over where I was even after my 3rd kid. This is disconcerting to me, hence I tend to fret over the notion that I'm much larger than I really am. Hence, I tend to make my sweaters and such much larger than they really need to be.

I'd already made Pink from the Custom Knits book and while I turned out great, it would have been better to knit it smaller. Yet at the time, I was utterly convinced I needed to make the large.

So I, with my 36" bust, thought I'd need to make this tank in the 36" size. Then I hung out on the Knit and Tonic Ravelry group for a while and read posts by Wendy herself saying that she likes everything with about 2" of negative ease and would recommend that for all the designs. That's just "how she rolls". I thought "you know what? That's how I roll too."

So I went with the 34" size. Turns out she knows what she's talking about and though I still would like to lose that 15 pounds, the tank looks pretty darn awesome!

The only problem is the neckline. I must have picked up the stitches a bit too tightly because there isn't a lot of stretch at the pick up line for the edging. I may rip it out, pick up the stitches with a larger needle, then reknit the edging with the smaller needle.

All in all though, I'd say this was a huge success!