The circumnav cardi needed some cosmetic surgery.
The construction calls for a provisional cast on, where you knit up for the folded pockets, then pick up the live CO stitches and work down for the bottom ribbing. The pattern recommends a crochet chain cast on and despite having no ill feelings toward crochet it just hates me. So I tried out the Looped Cast-On. After knitting a few rows after picking up the stitches it became apparent that for me at least, this cast on should've been done on needles about 5x smaller. The row was drastically enlarged and well, looked like crap.
(The start of the ribbing obscures the row a little, but trust me, it was bad in person.)

Surgery commenced. Using a spare needle, I started tightening up a stitch at a time, pulling the excess yarn out. It was oddly gratifying, seeing each little stitch straighten up. You can see the loop of excess yarn in the middle. At the end of the row I loosened the cast on slipknot and pulled out the extra string. I just roughly measured it; I think I removed about 6 feet out of that one row!

The after shot, with the bottom ribbing all complete and now ready to continue upward. The underarms call for a similar treatment. I'll be swatching some different techniques this time.
It was good practice for the upcoming grafting however.