Ok, remember how I didn't do a swatch? Well, my hubris angered the knitting gods so greatly that they turned the back of my sweater into a Giant Swatch.

I'm knitting and knitting, all happy and shit, when I take a break and hold the work up in front of me. "Look at that!" I marveled, "Such a nice, dense fabric. This is going to look great! My stitches are even, why, this looks like it was made on a machine!" I'm telling you, combined aka Eastern knitting is the way to go.

I mean, it looked Scrumtralescent (I'm so modest.) (Not.)

My next thought, "But it looks a little small. Maybe I'll go ahead and check the gauge."

6 and a half stitches per inch. I need five. This is on larger needles than specified by the pattern. I told you I knit tight. But I was alright! Only mildly disappointed!

I said to myself, "Ok, no problem. I will go higher. In fact, fuck you knitting, I'm going to go up three sizes from the original. Hah!"

So I go up to size 8 needles. I knit a small swatch and remeasure my gauge.

Five and a half stitches per inch. And I can't even fudge it to five. There is no lying to myself about this. That extra half stitch is sitting there, mocking me.

So I cast on and started knitting anyway. The fabric I'm creating looks like a net. I look like I'm going to cry. The whole shebang, in fact, looks like it's going to be thrown away.

But, like, I'll do a whole bunch of knitting on it first before we get to that point. Going alllllll the way, remember? I shake my yarn at you, knitting gods! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

But first, I'm going to take a break and knit something else.