So Small, Such Trouble!

I have been having a lot of trouble with this little sweater for something so tiny!

First, I've been having needle issues.  TL/DR - it was a pain, but is now resolved.
The long version - I started on size 4 straight needles for the ribbing at the collar, and then switched to size 6 straights for the body.  One of the needles is missing the knob at the end of the needle, so stitches can fall off the end.  Not a big problem, except that the sweater kept getting bigger and closer to the end.  So I switched to circular needles, but the tube between the needles was hard to slide the stitches over and made it all SO SLOW!  I got another set of needles out, and all was well.  When it was time to switch back to the size 4 for the final rows, I took the needles out of the 4 pocket, but after a row realized that they were actually size 5!  What? So I found some actual size 4s last night and did all the bottom ribbing.  I just need to bind off that edge and then it's off to Sleeveland!

Here's the new problem.  This occurred yesterday as I was bus knitting.  I was sitting there, happily working away when I noticed a hole waaaay up towards the top.  The options - 1) leave it there, 2) undo the whole sweater back to the hole, or 3) undo the involved rows and just rework those two.  
I didn't want to leave it, and I sure didn't want to undo the whole thing.  I had to undo several rows over the weekend because I used the smaller needles instead of the bigger ones and doing the sleeve separation for a third time didn't appeal to me.  So, undo the two rows and repair the hole!

Simple enough, right?  Except that the hole was in part created by me accidentally adding a stitch.  Oops.  If I eliminate that second stitch, there will be a bunch of extra yarn to manage and work into the rest of the sweater and that would be almost as much of a pain as re-knitting the whole thing.  So I kept the extra stitch.  I worked them back up, and thought it looked okay, but not great.  Then I looked at the back.  Yeah, this was not the best operation to perform on the bus.  I undid them again, but this time only one stitch at a time, and now it's pretty again.  

               

 

                            

I'm hoping to find 15 minutes to bind off during work today (maybe I'll eat lunch downstairs and take it with me) so that I can start the sleeves tonight.  I think they're just 30 rows or so?  That won't be so bad.

Anyhow, I hope you've enjoyed my tale of woe, and accompanying photo essay (I don't know why the photos are wonky!).  This also makes me appreciate knitting as a medium as opposed to things like woodworking.  It's generally pretty easy to fix mistakes.

I think Smallest might be in touch soon about the audition?  We talked about it yesterday and I mentioned that you were hoping to hear how things went.