Do I look fat in this?

Do you know that feeling when you're just sprinting along on a project, the end is in sight, you're closing in on your goal of a finished object, and then Whammo!, you hit the wall of sorrow? This happened to me last night. There I was, happily knitting away on the yoke of my resident cardigan-in-progress (this one if anyone's interested), watching TV, generally having a nice relaxed time. The pattern suggests trying on the sweater while you work on it so you can determine how deep you want the yoke to be, and me, being the obedient type, did just that. And terror ensued.



There is a definite problem here. The body of the sweater fits me just fine, but the arms! Do you see the sausage effect? What did I do to deserve this (my love for dansih pastries hopefully has little to do with this problem). Apparently I have disproportionately chunky arms compared to my torso. This is a theory I have considered before, but am now completely and utterly convinced is true. This is the third time I have to adjust a cardigan pattern to fit my overinflated appendages, a fact that indicates to me that there's nothing wrong with the world and it's pattern writers, but rather that there's something wrong with me.
Given that this has happened to me before, more than once, you might ask yourself how this could happen to me once again? Do I not have the good sense to try sleeves on as I knit them, adjusting them to the girth of my expansive arms? Do I not try on one sleeve before I knit the other one, just to save myself some time and heartache? Sadly, the answer is no. I just kind of assume, time and again, that patterns will work for me because they have worked for other people in the past. This assumption is stupid at best; I am well aware that we are not all created alike and that we bulge out in different places on our bodies. I even accept this when I'm shopping for jeans. But when it comes to knitting I just dive blindly in and hope things will turn out okay. Most of the time they do. Last night they didn't. I am now, to quote Elizabeth Zimmerman, eating the porridge of regret with the spoon of sorrow. Or something like that.
What to do next? Frankly, I'm too crushed right now to keep working on this project. I was really looking forward to wearing it, but since my dreams have been cruelly dashed, I think I need to move on to something else to get over the worst of the heartbreak. My red shawl-in-progress seems like a good option, it's a fun pattern done in a life-affirming color, I'm sure having some carefree fun with it will help me get through this. And then when I'm strong enough, which will hopefully be soon, I'll return to this sad little cardigan, unravel the sleeves from the bottom up and reknit them with some more stitches than dictated in the pattern.
Don't worry cardigan, I may be casting you aside in dismay right now, but I will return to you.