Tempermental Tempest

I should, by all rights, be finished with my Tempest cardi by now.

Sure I took a few weeks off of regular knitting to play Dragon Age. Sure I have spent most of the time not playing Dragon Age the last week spinning (cashmere - because how can you say wait to cashmere?).

Still! Before my darkspawn filled hiatus I was down to the sleeves. And I do mean JUST THE SLEEVES. The body was done. ends woven end. blocked. DONE. The sleeves were even started, I just needed to get knitting, seam it up and ha! finished sweater!

So I finally cracked down on myself this weekend and finished the sleeves. And today I went to seam it up, happy dreams of wearing it to Thanksgiving dinner dancing in my head.

Clearly its not done.

What happened is this. I went on my merry way, seaming the sleeve in and closing up the armhole. I was all hyped to start the side seams when I got home from work and I went to try it on to show off to my Mom and.... The arms are too snug.

Not just kind of fitted, but circulation inhibiting tight. Seriously these are made for someone with bony anorexic arms.

Closer inspection reveals that really... the whole sweater is a bit too small. Its very bizarre because I totally followed directions. I swatched and then blocked and then swatched again and then blocked again. I got gauge EXACTLY (I never get gauge exactly). I made ZERO modifications. I knit to what seemed like the right size.

My first instinct is that this is all those weeks of sitting on my lazy bum and killing demons coming back to bite me, but the scale and my tape measure assure me that however flabby I feel I should still fit into this sweater.

See my boobs not being interested in fitting in there? This sweater was clearly designed with the less chested in mind. (Also see my stupid squinty face? This is totally why one should not take mirror pictures of oneself)

This is not the end all of the tempest though. I wear most of my cardigans open anyway and the back is close fitting but not hopeless. So it doesn't close over my chest. Neither do a third of the button down shirts I own (I think they mostly did when I bought them - clearly my boobs have a mind of their own.. And also cotton shrinks. Stupid cotton.). That's what layers are for. The trick here is having armholes that I can fit another layer into (also fitting my arm in there without the tourniquet effect would be nice).

I've devised a cunning solution to my problem. I'm proceeding to set in the sleeves and then I'm frogging them back to the armholes. I can cast on a few extra stitches under the arms and knit the sleeves back down - in the round this time to avoid me wanting to stab myself redoing all that seaming again. This leaves a gap under the arms that is going to require a little gusset and really if I have enough yarn knitting a small 1 inch thick panel between the back and side pieces would do wonders for the fit (I am not really counting on having that much yarn).

Either way, it should end up wearable (please, please let it end up wearable), if not exactly what I intended.

I am beginning to wonder if perhaps I am simply not meant to knit garments.