More Ribbon Yarn

I went to Michaels the other day to get supplies for a non-knitting project (I'm making a guest book for a friend's wedding), and I ended up buying some Lion Brand ribbon yarn in Rainbow because the colors were fun, and I thought maybe if I liked the knitty x-back tank, I'd want more than one. I figured since that yarn was cheaper than the original yarn I'd gotten for the prject, I'd knit up the first on in that, work out the bugs. So I knitted up the swatch, and my stitches were not meeting guage at all. It calls for a size 11 needle, which I'm using, but I'm getting 16 stitches to 4 inches instead of 12 stitches to 4 inches. So now I face the choice of getting bigger needles (which would make it too lacy, I think), or adjusting the pattern, which seems like a total PITA. I thikn the problem is that the yarn is narrower than the stuff they call for. I should try a swatch with the original yarn I got, I guess, to see how that guage works out.

I went to the SnB at Panera in Watertown last week and had a great time. I brought along Liz and Kate, and we had a great meal and then joined the group already in progress. I got kind of wrapped up in the chatting and lost track of my rows so I had to stop because I was supposed to do a cable on the next row, but I was on the wrong side, so I needed to wait until I had better light to figure out if I'd done one extra, or not enough. Luckily I figured out when I got home that I'd done one fewer than I'd counted, so I didn't have to rip back. This was on the land and sea fairisle.