The Curse of the Pink Sweater

Ok, so while we were in Key West my mother and I stumbled on a little yarn store (fine, I looked for one online before we got off the ship, no judging, lol) and since my mother had fallen in love with my sweater she decided to buy some yarn for one of her own. I was thrilled that the owner even printed out a copy of the pattern for me so I could start right away. We got back on the ship and I immediatly cast on a gauge swatch so this thing would fit my mother. I had carefully measured her chest circumference and noted that it was the size small. Which, no offense mom, seemed a bit odd. My mother is not a large woman by any chance, but I was thinking more of the medium route for her. Anyway, I decide to let the gauge swatch decide and so began on size 8 needles. Swatch was odd, nothing seemed to match up, but I figured whats life without a little risk and cast on the size small on size 8 needles. Knit all the way through all of the increases with no issues, but did happen to note that maybe the buttonholes weren't going to work out the way they had with mine. There wasn't going to be enough garter stitch top to have 3 buttonholes (which really should have been my first clue). Ignored it, and decided to try it on mom anyway....lets just say that the sweater hit the frog pond going 100 mph. It wasn't even close, heck, it wasn't even close to being close. I decided medium size on an upsized needles would work. Cast on for 2nd attempt, misread 3 rows for 3 ridges (actually 6 rows)...frog again. Cast on for 3rd attempt, knit along perfectly happy for about 3 inches. Begin thinking about button colors....realize that button holes are kind of important to the presence of buttons, frog again. Cast on for 4th (and hopefully final) attempt. So far so good, we're clipping along at a good pace, am getting to the point now where I need to measure the progress against mom to make sure it'll fit. Fingers crossed all, I don't think I can take another disappointment.