Giant fluffy sweater, day 1/2

I almost never knit large projects - I'm more at home with hats, mittens, scarves, and baby clothes. I think it's a problem of limited time to commit to a single project, since my days involve being (and staying) employed, and my evenings involve cooking, playing with Liam, putting Liam to bed, cleaning up, and working more, and then knitting if I have the time. I'm also insanely picky about projects for myself, so I wouldn't make most things I see patterns for, and I change every pattern I use. I found a sweater pattern that I wanted to make for myself, though: this one is straightforward, functional, and cute, and it's done in very big yarn, so it ought to go pretty quickly.

I cast on yesterday, and between the yarn, which is huge (it's like pencil roving), and my giganto needles (which feel like I'm knitting with tree branches or something), I'd used up an entire ball of yarn in five and a half rows. That second ball got me through to the end of row 13. At this point, I started wondering whether I have enough yarn to make this sweater. The lady at the yarn store ordered me a bag of eight balls of yarn in the same dye lot, which was the number that the pattern called for, but if I'm only going to get 8-ish rows per ball of yarn, this might be tight. Back to the pattern to check, and...oh. 8 100-gram balls of yarn, according to the pattern, and I have 8 50-gram balls of yarn. That's...huh. It's totally a matter of perception, but I probably wouldn't have started this pattern if I'd known I would need 15 or 16 balls of yarn. That seems like way too much.

I'm up to row 24 now, and I will get to about row 54 before it's time to add stitches for the sleeves, which will just about take all of the yarn that I have. The sweater is going to be very cute, with the big puffy stitches and the garter-stitch border and the great buttons my friend S gave me for by birthday. I sure hope the lady at the yarn store can order another bag in the same dye lot.