Riddle me this, Frogman

The project in question - Heart Yoke Cardigan from Vogue Holiday 2009.
The mystery - Where the heck did all my yardage go?

With the help of my frog assistant we will try to crack this case. To begin with we give you exhibit one.
The directions state that we need 1100 yards of the main color for size 36.

My Rav stash page says we have 1270 yards of Sublime Extra Fine Merino which seems like more than enough.

Pattern states that gauge is 22sts by 28 rows in 4." Yes we did knit a gauge swatch before starting (However lets not go into how small that swatch was) but let's check the gauge of the sweater.
Here is the body which is knit flat.

Stitch gauge breaks down to 5.5 which is spot on (just hard to see, I assure you it's a half stitch on the edge) Row gauge breaks down to 7, my row gauge is a tad tighter at 8.

Now let's check the sleeves since they are knit in the round.

Ahh, gauge on the sleeves appears to be the same as the body.

I sent frog off to do some calculations to see if the tighter row gauge would suck up an extra 170 yards. However he sort of zoned off and might have been making certain "words" out of numbers.


I went with the non scientific route and knit until all the yarn was gone. Sadly the short row directions included a line I'd missed when gambling that there was enough of the main color to get to the Fair Isle section. (Repeat short rows 3 and 4, 6 more times.)

Yes, my project is currently stalled until more yarn reaches me via snail mail.

The verdict - The extra rows must have done me in. Or maybe Vogue directions suck.