Knitting woe

So I picked up my sweater to work on again and knit a pair of rows (808 sts since I'm doing back and front at the same time) and since I'm nearly at the armscye I figured I'd better get a good measurement of it so I can calculate my decreases.

[insert assorted profanity here]

My gauge swatch lied.

Apparently I have loosened up a lot in knitting this pattern. A lot. As in ten inches of positive ease. Which would have been fine in the 80s but not in aught-nine.

I'll remeasure tomorrow but I have the sinking feeling the answer to the problem is to measure my gauge from the sweater and figure out what size I should knit from that and start over.

I am not a happy knitter.

And I know I should have noticed earlier. In my defense, I generally knit with my work bunched up on the needle rather than using a long cable so I don't have to shuffle things around as much. I transfered to a longer cable so I could check the measurement and went "oh, that can't be good" when I saw it spread out.

Add to that the fact that I have been losing weight... I gained a couple inches of ease since I started with that alone.

41,612 stitches to waste, argh!

Well, I think take two (and I reluctantly admit I need to do if it really as big as I just measured, I'm also in denial on that) will be in the round, even if it does make setting in the sleeves a bit tricker. If my measurements are right I'll drop out 4 pattern repeats and the "filler" cables from knitting it flat, that will take out 124 stitches (including the selvedge that is no longer needed).

It's kinda amazing to think that my single row stitch count will go from 404 to 280 though, assuming all my midnight math is right.