Learning about patience...

I was telling Molly the other day that knitting has really taught me to be more patient. Well... little did I know that I had more to learn. Last night I went from this:


to this:


I checked my stitch gauge, but I never checked my row gauge. I have never checked row gauge before, but when making a skirt, apparently it is important. The row gauge the pattern called for was 29 rows = 4', I think. Mine was 35 rows. No wonder my skirt was seeming rather short...
So I decided to just start over from the lace. I checked my stitch gauge again before ripping, and it was off, so I just decided to rework the entire pattern. I measured a skirt that I already have and that fits nicely & decided I wanted 7 inches between the waist and the widest part of my hips. I needed the skirt to be 20" across at the hip and 17" across at the waist. And I wanted the skirt to be a total of 28" long. So I got out my calculator and got to work figuring out how many stitches equaled 20", how many stitches equaled 17", how many rows equaled 7" and so on, and figured out how to space the decreases to make it all work. It was at first annoying, and confusing, but then once I got the hang of it, it was quite satisfying. I basically rewrote the pattern (except the lace part), and it really wasn't that hard. So if either of you think you may need to do this, let me know and I can give you more specifics on how I figured mine out. Until then, good luck. This better be a pretty grand skirt, thats all I've got to say!