Flat or Round?

I have been working hard all day - no, not cleaning and doing chores but researching! The sad part is that I am no better off now than when I first started this journey.

I want to make Pokey a sweater vest for Christmas that I found in my Deborah Norville pattern book. I have a beautiful hazelnut beige to work it in that is creamy beyond belief and a joy to work with but I hesitate to cast on... you see, I despise seaming. I do, I said it and I'm not ashamed. Seaming is not something I excel at and if I can figure out a way to convert a pattern and not have to do it, I'm all over it.

So this sweater vest, which is actually elegantly simplistic in nature, has become a mental juggernaut for me. How many stitches to actually cast on, do you ignore the salvage edge in your count, what to do when you reach the armhole shaping... ugh, my blond brain can only handle so much some days and when you add a ponytail to the mix, well let's just say I have yet to figure this out.

I am thinking that since my pattern calls for 98 stitches to be cast on for the front, that if I were to work in the round, I should cast on 196 with a purple marker after the first 98 and a blue marker after the second 98 but before joining the round... then my brain goes into overload and I wonder how will I know if I am on the front or back once it's being worked because the position of the markers is all relative and perception could change as to their location during the knitting process ~ no lie, I actually went there.

I have a sneaky suspicion that I just might be over-thinking this one a tad.