Crafting crankiness

I think I've discovered how to prolong the, um, joy of knitting a single top-down baby sweater that has no cables, colourwork, fancy stitches or laciness whatsoever:

1. Swatch. Aim for a gauge of 4 stitches/inch.


2. Squint at the swatch, compare with tape measure and think, "Well, that looks about right."


3. Cast on for sweater.


4. Knit rows and rows of garter stitch. Every few rows, increase number of stitches. Mutter sotto voce when one forgets where one is supposed to increase.


5. Look closely at pattern instructions. Notice that one has skipped a few crucial rows, and that the first one was...oh...about 30 rows back.


6. Sigh loudly.


7. Frog.


8. Re-knit the section, this time including all of the rows in the pattern.


9. Stop occasionally to verify that the gauge is fine. Panic a bit when the gauge appears to be 4.5 stitches per inch instead of 4. Convince oneself that the gauge is being compressed magically by all of the increases in the pattern and will return to normal once the increases end.


10. Knit for a couple more hours and enter a huge patch of stockinette stitch.


11. Proudly hold up sweater-in-progress.


12. Think, "Hm, it looks a bit small."


13. Measure sweater. Confirm that circumference is 2 inches less than planned. Swear loudly.


14. Re-measure gauge. Finally admit it really is, and will steadfastly remain, 4.5 stitches per inch.


15. Frog. The. Entire. Bloody. Thing.


16. Blame the cats.


17. Decide to re-knit sweater two sizes up. But first, do something else for a few hours. Or days. Whatever.


18. Repeat until finished.