Crouch We Here A-While and Lurk

I finished the wrap cardigan that I've taken to calling "the Penelope sweater", due to the number of times I've had to tear out problems. Or so I thought after finishing the (insanely long) belt and sewing up the side seams. This morning, I rose from my bed thinking of wearing said sweater to work today. The knitting gods had other plans. It looks homemade, friends, in the worst way. No, the sleeves aren't different lengths or anything, but they are ugly, 1980s mutton sleeves. This wasn't apparent until I put it on. I wasn't thrilled with the (assumed to be slight at the time) poofiness of the sleeve caps when I eased them in, but when I saw them on, I wanted to die. I will never leave my house in this sweater as is. Maybe the poof wouldn't be so horrendous if the sleeves, which should be fitted caps, fit my shoulders. No, the shoulder does that weird wingy thing that sweater vests often, unfortunately, do. This puts the poof about 5 cm down my arm. Hate, hate, hate! No, I have to tear out my carefully crafted seams, frog the sleeves, and knit a smaller size, in the hopes that they won't suck. If I didn't love this yarn, I would have ditched this piece of shit pattern ages ago. It reminds me of a Monet painting. I'm sure that he had to rework his pieces on occasion, so I'll try to keep that in mind as I dismember the sweater.
Adding insult to injury: I can't find the magazine with the pattern and may have to buy another copy in order to finish this beast. Rage may ensue. Still, I delude myself with ideas like, maybe if I were to reseam the shoulders, I could hide the poofiness in the underarm. Yeah, except the sleeve cap is knit in an inevitably poofy manner. How did I not foresee this problem, you ask. The model in the picture has her arms cleverly arranged akimbo, as to minimize poof, and stands at an angle that obscures the other side.
I don't want to buy another copy of the magazine. I'm broke, for starters, because I've just shelled out for my upcoming Spring vacation. Also, the email correspondence that I've had with one of the sub-editors or assistant types has been less than elucidating. That they responded at all to my question on their website about errata for this pattern is pretty cool, but they missed the big picture. The armholes were crazy long when I knit the fronts according to the pattern, so doing the decreases further apart will not rectify that problem. That seems dead obvious to me, but apparently not to the knitting professionals at the magazine.
Luckily, I have other irons in the fire. I am making a pair of fingerless gloves for a friend out of Noro Kureyon, purchased from my love/hate mail-order Canadian yarn shop. Recently, I had the opportunity to speak to the proprietor there about an ongoing backorder. Adorable accent! I ordered the Noro about a month ago (?) along with the alpaca yarn needed to finish my Phildar cardigan, but still await the non-impulse purchase yarn. One of the gloves is already finished, tried on the recipient a couple of times. They're not a surprise gift. Since they're for a man, I had to measure his hand size, and well, the fittings were to prevent an unfortunate too-small present. I worked from the fabulous fingerless glove pattern in SnB Nation, but modified. Ornate cable patterns for a man? Well, maybe if he were my love-slave, but he's not. I knit a plain panel instead, to be worn on the palm side. Also adjusted was the thumb gusset, which provides more ease. About halfway through the first one, I had a fleeting fear that Kureyon is too *fancy* for a man, but he was interested by the variegation. I also wonder if he would tell me if he didn't like them, or if said present could be misconstrued. God, I overthink things sometimes.