Tempting II tragedy

Tempting II . . . I'm tempted to kill someone.

I saw it coming. I never knit from patterns without messing with them. I adapt them for my shape, I read through and find boo boos and fix. I never just pick up a pattern and knit it as written. Until now. I even went so far as to go on e-bay to buy Rowan Calmer (since I did a lot of reading about how unique it is). Here's what it's supposed to look like:


The instruction for the yoke seemed suspect to me. I read other people's blogs and there were many cute versions out there, and nobody mentioned any problems with the band. Some people changed the yoke to K2 tog all the way around, but it was this that seemed like "how the hell will this work"

Using a new ball of yarn and double-point needles, CO 11 sts. Work in 1x1 Rib until work measures 5 inches, ending with a WS row.

Next Row [RS]: Work in patt to last st, ssk last st of band tog with first st of neckline.
Next Row [WS]: Work in patt.
Repeat these 2 rows until all sts of neck have been worked.

That means there's two rows of the band to every single stitch. Although I was filled with disbelief, I soldiered on. I somehow believed it would all come out okay in the end. This is what made more sense to me (Patty's version of above)

Next row (RS): Work in patt to last st, ssk last st of band tog with first st of neckline. Next row (WS): P2 tog w/first stitch of band with next stitch of yoke, work across row in patt

I stupidly wasted all my time finishing it. Here's what it looked like


Still, I soldiered on. Next step was to seam up the arm holes. The pattern called for a three needle bind off, but I was afraid that would make it too bulky, so I did kitchener stitch instead. I was still left with this delightful hole:


I had to add several more stitches to make it look okay:


At this point I tried it on. It looked like ass. Here it is in all it's floppy glory:


I tried tucking in the ends and seeing what it would look like buckled. No better:


I was feeling depressed and then I found this web page. It featured another sad knitter who's Tempting II looked EXACTLY like mine:


All right all you Tempting II knitters out there. What's the secret. How come some of us knit happy products with NO mention of altering the pattern, while others followed the pattern and ended up with a floppy mess.

Lemme know