Confessions of a poser rogue knitter

(OK, now I know what everyone complains about WRT Blogger. Sheesh!)
I never learned the rules, so I really can't break them. And yet, every time, every pattern, the uninformed rogue comes out and wants to change things. The result? I frog every single item I ever make. In fact, I usually knit every pattern 3 times to get 1 FO. It's now DH's new favorite way to tease me. Current cases (yes plural) in point:

The Rug
Yes, the rug. The friggin rug that's supposed to be completely mindless knitting it's so easy. I frogged the entire thing last night. Why? Because I noticed that 1) my rows didn't match the pattern (some had 6, some 7, some 8 when all should have been around 6), and 2) I realized I needed to make 4 panels to sew together. If the panels weren't the same, they wouldn't match in size, and I'd have a heck of a time making the darned thing even. So, the result is I ripped it all off and am starting over. BUT, the rogue has to emerge, so I'm knitting ONE panel that is 5 times larger than the panels in the book. Why? Knitting 1 panel means I can change however many rows I want and not have to worry about matching up any other panels to it.

How will it turn out? Gawd, I hope OK!

The Cardigan
So I had some yarn for a cardigan from knitty, but I decided I wanted something more slim and trim. YGG had a great cardigan, but the yarn swatched a smaller gauge than called for in the YGG pattern. Some hackneyed simple calculations showed that I could use the yarn I had but knit the largest size in the pattern to result in the smaller size that would fit me. For some reason, I figured I'd knit the small size for length (e.g., knit for 11.5" rather than 12 or 13) but I'd knit the largest size for width (e.g., cast on 84 st instead of 74). Now I'm wondering if I'm going to have a squat box of a sweater. Only time will tell.

In the meantime, here's a nice pic from the train.

Note to self: don't use the phone camera again. Repeat: don't use the phone camera again.