Knitting Angst

I hate it when this happens:



This is Picovoli in purple. The length between my thumb and finger is the length from the neckline to the underarm ... except that it obviously isn't enough, as you can see from the Green Gable sweater under it (unless the neckline is meant to be almost in my armpit, which really wasn't my vision for this garment). When I knit Green Gable (also a top-down knit) I had to add a couple of inches to the length from the neck to the underarm. It was a tedious process of knitting, putting stitches on waste yarn, trying on, putting the stitches back on the needles, knitting a few more rows, waste yarn, try on, etc. etc.

It seems to me that someone somewhere has written a schematic on how to alter sizes for top-down knits, and hasn't really taken into consideration that shoulder-to-armpit measures don't change at the same rate that the bustline measures change.

I've found a Knit Along for Picovoli. I should probably scan through it to see if others have offered a "fix" for the problem. Really, though, I don't want to deal with it. I'm tempted to just rip it back out and do something else with the yarn. Something non-raglan and non-top-down. Something I can knit while trying to figure out how to teach Classical Writing Aesop (yes, that is what the knitting is piled on). The kids want to start school next week, and it's really too hot for a dark purple handknit top.

I would continue in this grumpy vein of thought, but I just realized that I put cupcakes in the oven to bake and forgot to set the timer, so I need to go watch them bake.