Goldilocks and the 3 yarns...

After my post yesterday, I took another look at my stash. I actually have yarn for 3 sweaters- knitpicks palette, an unknown recycled yarn(URY) and cotton-ease. I really want to use up my stash so I started gauging. Palette was to thin. URY was too fuzzy and wrong gauge. Cotton-ease came out jst about perfect. I was at 17.5 st/in vs 18 st/in. I have heard that Debbie Bliss patterns are notoriously big. I would normally be a medium(38") but 44" bust seems huge. A small is 40" so I am tempted to make that one plus if you add in the 1/2 stitch I am off in my gauge, the small will be a bit bigger. Has anyone had this experience with Lara or a DB pattern?