"I told you sooooooooo".....

Those are the words I keep hearing in my head from that annoying woman who writes that little blurb in knitting patterns... I can hear her nagging, "Take time to check your gauge!" So she is mocking me now... "I told you to check your gauge!" I reply to myself, "Yeah, yeah, get off my back!" Okay...so I could have done two things... either did like she said and knitted a swatch to make sure I had the gauge right...or ran to Ben Franklin or Uncommon Threads to buy the right size needles.... but noooooooooooo, I'm too impatient for that kind of stuff.

As you can see above...I ended up with sleeves that were 25 inches wide, when they were only supposed to be 17 inches wide, and a body that was 21 inches wide, but like 20 feet long!!! so I found a solution...

Turn the sweater the other way and stitch it up opposite! ha ha ha So now what was supposed to be the sleeves has become the body, and the body is now the sleeves...really long sleeves! I started to stitch up the one side, but I keep having to go back and redo it because it just doesn't look right. After I'm done stitching it up, I'll have to add a few inches to the body since it is pretty short now. So I'm close to being done....but yet soooooo far away!

I did learn something though...the reason I always avoided the gauge thing was because I didn't really understand it completely. I understood it as far as figuring out how many rows will make an inch...but it didn't occur to me that the number of stitches per inch could be so dramatic just by jumping up one needle size!! Wow! I now know better for my next project...and yes, there WILL be a next project because despite the frustration, I still really enjoy this!