If at first you don't succeed, try, try again

Ways to go from this:

To this:

1. Join a KAL for Lelah with the beginning lace knitters group on Ravelry, despite having other plans for April knitting. Decide to join along because I'm basically absent from this group, but I don't want to be. And because my new year's resolution was to knit more for myself, and Lelah is in my queue. And I'm knitting it in Cotton TLC, so it's pretty darn inexpensive.

2. Measure and calculate according to the directions.

3. Cast on 220 stitches, knit the first round and discover you have one extra stitch. Drop the extra stitch, and midway through the second round realize it wasn't an extra stitch, you just skipped a stitch in the pattern.

4. Frog and cast on 220 stitches again. Repeat step 3. Tell yourself you're an idiot, and pay extra careful attention to step 5.

5. Cast on 220 stitches, and VERY carefully, checking often, knit the first round.

6. Congratulate yourself on completing the first round, and keep on knitting.

7. Realize your first ball of yarn is almost gone, and yet you don't have much knitted. Worry a little bit, because you bought 4 balls of yarn, and you thought that was about one whole extra ball.

8. Go back to the pattern and your measurements. Begin to realize you made a big erro in your mathematical reasoning, and realize your shirt is about 10" too big around the hem.

9. Congratulate yourself for being a math genius, and then tell yourself you're pretty stupid for not catching this problem way earlier. Like, before you cast on the second or third time.

10. Frog again, and wind up yarn. Place project in bottom of current project bag until it learns to behave itself.