I'm not a moron. No, really, I'm not.
I have a university degree, with economics. Which can be really freaking hard. Really hard. I regularly read Canada Revenue Agency Interpretation Bulletins, and I have spent the better part of a month reading the FINTRAC guidelines, which do not provide much in the way of guidance. (The CRA Bulletins don't interpret much either).
All of this in spite of the fact I can't count to 11, and I can't do really basic math, even with a gauge calculator.
But, I'm not a moron.
Nope. Not me.
It's just that it was late on Wednesday night, and I really wanted to bring my sweater to knit at the Knitting Philosophy Club, and I was doing the gauge swatches, and they absolutely weren't working, and I had tried 3 different needles, so I had to pull up my gauge calculator, and well, I did something really wrong.
Non Knitting Explanation: Gauge means the number of stitches you get per inch. If you are getting more stitches per inch, than you should, and you don't increase the number of stitches you are knitting with, your sweater will be too small. Similarly, if you are getting fewer stitches per inch than you should, and you don't decrease the number of stitches you are working with, your item will be too big. Either way, get it wrong and you'll find yourself looking for a chilly elephant, or a cold barbie that needs covering up.
So, when my tired brain tried to tell me, several times, on Wednesday night, and then again on Thursday at lunch that there was something wrong, because I was knitting more stitches per inch than I should be (remember, that makes your work smaller, not larger) and I had cast on fewer stitches to begin with, as I knew my gauge was wrong, well, I really should have listened.
Because 2 wrongs don't make a right.
They do require you to rip out 10 inches of knitting. Or, to put it in a more painful way, around about 17, 000 stitches.