Swatched!

Well, the mob, such as it is, has spoken, and it (you) have told me that I should knit the Urban Aran. I am in total agreement with you, and even had Anne-Marie not cast the tie-breaking vote yesterday afternoon, I probably would've proceeded with that choice. Having made this decision, I got to swatching:
I actually cut the yarn, and washed the swatch, which I photographed as evidence. May I just brag for a second that I took this photo with my phone (I got myself a Blackberry Storm for Christmas), and the color is really accurate, better, I think, than my regular camera would have done. Of course I took this at work where we have good light, so that might have something to do with it as well. I also uploaded it to Flickr from my phone, and now I can blog it, all without carrying around my camera. Hehe...
Now that I have the swatch, the problems can begin. Of course my row gauge is a disaster, which is frankly nothing new and I'm not worried about compensating for it, since I do it all the time and the pattern has things like "knit until 11 inches" in length, which make dealing with row gauge managable. The larger issue is my stitch gauge. I'm getting 4.25 st/in, and the pattern calls for 3.75 st/in. I did a lot of math and determined that if I make the medium size with my gauge I should get something in the range of the small size, maybe a bit smaller, which would actually be preferable. So, that's my plan. I was going to convert the pattern to the round to avoid seaming, but I think, with the stitch/row gauge issues, I should knit in pieces so I can knit the back first and make sure it comes out the right width before I knit the entire sweater. Thoughts?