Blinders

When Anne-Marie and I saw Stephanie, aka the Yarn Harlot, last Friday, a woman was there with a gigantic sweater: It's difficult to get the full scale of the sweater (you should've seen the contorting that went into the photos Stephanie took), but this was clearly much larger than intended. Yet she had perservered and finished it up, all the way down to the sewing. Stephanie blogged about this today actually, so you can go over there for more details if you'd like. I'll wait. Anyway, I'm a bit concerned that I'm doing the same thing with my Drops Swing Cardigan, knitting blindly away whilst ignoring the fact that it seems way too big. Before you ask, yes, I checked my gauge, and yes, I've been comparing my piece to the schematic, and yes, it's the right size, pretty much. Mine is a tad wider in the armpits because my row gauge was off so it's wider a bit higher up than it should be, but I've added extra decreases in the armholes to compensate. Hopefully. Yet, it's just, well, large! The bottom of the back is 24" wide! That means the whole sweater will be 48" in circumference! It's meant to be swingy (hence the name), and it's hard to tell how much ease there is in the model photo, but still. However, as I suggested above, I am charging ahead blindly. Swingy cardigans are all the rage this fall (hell, I wore one today - nowhere near as wide (I compared), but within range), and I don't think I'll really be able to get a handle on whether this is working or not until I have the fronts and the back done so I can pin them together and determine the level of ridiculousness that is ensuing. Speaking of sewing up, can anyone think of a reason not to kitchener the shoulder seams?

Edited to add: I finished the back tonight - here's a shot, although it doesn't really show the sheer size of it:

By the way, the Yarn Harlot was hilarious as usual on Friday. Many others have blogged about it, so I'll not really go into it here. I didn't get any good photos of her speaking because the lighting was tough, and, as Jessica pointed out, she's not very tall behind the podium.

Sorry if this post is rambling, but I had a committee meeting today so I'm a bit loopy this evening. The meeting went very well but I was quite stressed about it beforehand and now I'm in relaxed babbling mode. That said, I'm off to watch the rest of the Hitchcock marathon on AMC. First we had Rear Window, now The Birds, and finally Rope. I doubt we'll make it through all three, but it's worth a shot!