Bitches Get Stitches

or at the very least a nosebleed.
today was a terrible day, blog readers.
most of it isn’t really worth writing about,
but there is a knitting related disaster that is.

the rhinebeck sweater may not happen.

where to begin.
the pattern i chose doesn’t go up to my size.
and i was getting a tighter gauge in the yarn i wanted.
this means, much math was needed to make the sweater fit.

i’m a good knitter. i can do math.
hell, i completed calc 4 in undergrad with a 3.5!

i swatched.
i washed my swatch.

i did the math.
i did it again.
i did it again!

and completed two beautiful sleeves
whose gauge matched my swatch.

i measured my body.
i measured again.
i had my coworkers measure me.
i cast on the number of stitches that would fit me
and the pattern repeat for the colorwork yoke.

all was well.

today, after traversing the knitting black hole for two weeks,
the body of my sweater is finally long enough to join the arms
and enter icelandic colorwork yoketown.

i’ve been measuring for days,
but today i noticed something.
the body seemed a little big.

i am not skinny by any stretch
but still. it seemed pretty big.

so i decided to put half my stitches on another needle and try it on.
well as soon as i did that,
it looked really big.

i asked yvonne to come back with me in the office,
told the thursday night knitters not to steal anything,
and tried it on.

it’s huge.
very huge.

i asked yvonne to check my gauge to see if i’ve been hallucinating this whole time.

i wasn’t.
i was being lazy.

there is a good reason patterns list gauge over 4 inches/10cm
i was only checking over 1 inch.

so while i was getting 5 stitches/inch (perfect swatch gauge)
yvonne was getting 18.75-19 stitches/4 inches.
these gauges do not match.

this is a huge difference when we are talking about a sweater.
the short of it is, instead of the 1 inch of ease i was going for,
i have 6. 6 inches of ease.

it is a tent.

i want to die.

i know i know, you think it can’t be that bad.
let me give you a visual:

i told you.
huge.

now, i’m not looking for sympathy.
i’m looking for advice on how to proceed.
this is my first trip to rhinebeck
so the sweater was/is really important to me.
but i have a week and need to be realistic.
so i’m asking the knitting blogosphere for advice.

what should i do?

1 – rip it! you can knit this in a week!
2 – steek it. cut the fat and pick up for the yoke.
3 – fuck it! wear the hotpants.
4 – drink until you don’t care and pick up a man.
5 – other

please people.
i need advice.
stat!