Baobab baby pullover - gauge

I mentioned recently that I am going to test a new pattern for a baby pullover inspired by the Baobab trees in South Africa.  I've gotten permission from the designer to blog the process.  I haven't done much yet, but I thought I'd show it to you.

Here's the picture of the finished sweater that I hope mine will eventually look like:

It's so cute with an owl in the tree and on the sleeves.  I just loved the owls in the Owl and Pussy Cat baby hat I knitted, so I'm looking forward to knitting more of them.

So far all I've done is knit a gauge swatch.  I've written about gauging before.  It's not the most fun thing to do - once you're done, you don't have a finished product (other than a potential cat toy).

It is necessary, though.

Here's my gauge swatch for this baby pullover:

The yarn I'm using is Knit Picks Swish DK in Squirrel Heather.  I'll review it once I've worked with it more, but so far I really like it.  It's very soft.  When it gets wet, though, it seems to be really stretchy.  So once I hand-washed it and pinned it to dry, it ended up being bigger than it was supposed to be:

As you can see, 22 stitches is a trifle bigger than 4".  Since it's too big, I need to decrease the size of the needles.

I don't think I'm going to knit another swatch - decreasing the needles one size should take care of it.  Besides, I really want to get started on knitting the sweater.

That will have to wait until Sunday, though.  Tomorrow, Steve and I are going to be in a Settlers of Catan game tournament, then we're going to Illinois to have dinner at Tsukasa with my mother and stepfather to celebrate Steve's birthday.  I'm not sure what I'm going to blog about, but I'll think of something.