Woe

Yesterday I got out the measuring tape and measured the yoke of my sweater so far. I had omitted the bottom row of diamonds in an attempt to compensate for my too-loose guage, since I was afraid it would end up much too long if I knit the pattern as written.

I've got about 18 rows to go in the yoke and it was looking kind of short when measured against my hand, so I got out the measuring tape and enlisted the SO to help me with the math. Then I refused to believe him, tried to work out how it would be okay, wondered whether I should just go the last few rounds and finish it and see what would happen, or if I should just give it up now and rip back. Finally he convinced me to put it on waste yarn and try it on. I did, and he measured to where he thought it would reach, based on our math. Verdict in. No doubting it now. The yoke is too short. I have to pull it out and do it the way it's written. I cannot begin to explain how this is so, but it is. SIGH.

Really I'm not as bothered as I could be. The yoke has actually been pretty quick to knit and fairly intuitive, allowing me to catch mistakes as I was making them rather than many rows later. What I'm really irked about is that I have to rip back so far that I will be back in the area where it was tight and difficult to knit because of the sleeves. grr.

I'm not sure whether I will rip all the way back to where I joined the pieces and redo it, or if I will just rip back to the two plain rows after the join and before the chart. I do have a couple of gaping stitches where I picked up stitches for the front shaping that I could take this opportunity to address, but then I would have to worry about things falling out further than they should, etc. I don't know. I'm going to spend time thinking about it. I'll be busy all the rest of this week except for tonight, and Tuesdays are for spinning, so I have some time to figure out how I want to handle it.