Oh, and another thing:

My mom called me last night. She said she had some questions about what you do with yarn after you rip out. I asked her what she was ripping out. She said "Remember that vest?" (this is a Blackberry Ridge vest that she made - I think it's called Equinox). "Oh," I said, "Is it coming out too big?" (My mother is a tiny little thing, and she complains about there not being enough size-range at the bottom of the scale as much as I complain about there not being sizes bigger than a 38" bust).

"No," she responded. "Too small."

Well, in the course of talking, I found out that she HAD NOT MADE A GAUGE SWATCH ahead of time. (This is a woman who has been knitting longer than I have been on this Earth). She figured, because she had always gotten gauge lately, she wasn't going to sweat it. (I guess she didn't think about different designers and test-knitters having different gauges...). So she knit away for about 12" of the vest, and then realized as she got to the armholes that something was wrong, so she measured. Her gauge was something like 12 sts to 2" where the recommended gauge was 9 sts to 2".

So, she must rip back, hank and steam the yarn (my suggestion) and start over.

Now, I love my mother very, very much. And I can imagine how much it must suck to have to rip out 12" of knitting. But you know, I was TOTALLY fighting the temptation to go all Nelson Muntz and say "Ha ha, you didn't do a gauge swatch."

But like I said, I love my mother very, very much. And I can imagine how horrid it must be to rip back something you've been working on since, like, Thanksgiving. But let this be a warning to you: If you are not my mom, and you fail to do a gauge swatch, and you have to rip back, you WILL get a "Ha ha!" from me.

I *always* do a gauge swatch. (Well, not for socks, but that's because I know how most of the sockyarns "behave." And not for scarves because I usually just start it and let the start be my swatch. And no, I don't generally wash and dry and block and all that to my swatches. But my sweaters fit.)