Twice Knit

I finished the back of the CPH last night and finally had to face facts–it’s probably too small. I’m still on the fence about this because my gauge is exactly the same as it was in my (pre-washed) swatch, and it will grow when blocked. However, the combination of making smaller size and using smaller needles seems to have done me in–I forgot to take into account the pulling of the cables and how that affects the gauge. I keep stretching it out to the width I’d like it to be after blocking, and I think it’s a bit too much to ask of the yarn. So I’m starting over.

I had already starting ripping it back before remembering to take a picture. Here’s the first version of the CPH that was not meant to be:

This is particularly annoying to me because this time I did everything by the book. Not only did I swatch, I did it with three different needle sizes and even washed them, recording the measurement before and after. It took a whole ball. What can I say, I have a lot of the yarn.

(Always wanted to know the gauge in Cashmerino Aran in needle sizes 6, 7, or 8? I’m your girl. Let me know.)

In the process of acknowledging the unavoidable, I’ve been reading what other people had to say about the sweater on ravelry. Virtually everybody says they were afraid it was going to come out too small. Some then flipped to fearing it would turn out too big. It occurs to me that, no matter how much prep work we do, whether something large like a sweater fits is largely a crapshoot. You can swatch all you want, but things change when you get the whole mass of a sweater sewn together.

Now I’m not sure how to proceed. Do I make the next size up with the smaller needles, hoping it won’t be too big? The flaw in this plan is that the next size is 4 inches bigger. That’s a bit more than I want to overestimate. Do I make the smaller size with the bigger needles that the pattern called for? That would seem like the smart thing to do, but I don’t like how much looser the fabric turns out with those needles. However, looking at the gauges side by side, I guess it’s not that much of a difference. I don’t feel like recalculating everything in order to make a size in between those in the pattern, so I’m sticking with these two choices. I must go ponder.