MAN, this project was a headache. I had to pull out rows and pull out rows because my stitch count wasn’t consistent with what she had in the pattern for small. Many expletives later, however, I’m pretty pleased with the results.

My alterations:
1) EXTRA ROWS
I (like some other Ravelers) added extra rows to make the vest longer. I just worked rows 7, 3-6 of the body pattern once more at the ends of the first front, back, and second front. That, in effect, made the armholes a little bigger as well.

2) CRAB STITCH BORDER
Where she says to do two rows of singles all around the edges to finish, I did one row of singles and then went around the entire piece (Armholes too) doing the crab stitch (reverse single crochet). That made for a cool rope-like textured effect around the edges--plus I get bored with plain old single crochet, lol.

3) CHANGED ROW 7
After having to keep pulling out much of my work again and again because of incorrect stitch counts, I decided to ignore the beginning directions for row 7 of the body pattern. Where it says to “skip first 3 dc, dc in next dc” I decided to just work the dc, ch1, skip 1, pattern repeat ALL across that row. Once I started doing that, my stitch count was right as rain and everything looked great.