Climber Down! Climber Down!

Oh God. I can barely stand to write about this. I had to frog the Stole of Evil this morning. Again. All the way to nothing.

I had progressed to 1.5 repeats. All appeared well. On the last row, I came up with one stitch too many. I counted again, still 81. I spread out the lace to see where I might have been wrong. Couldn't spot it. No problem, I thought, I'll just frog back to the life line. Both life lines were securely in place. No problem!

Problem. As I was counting the stitches after retrieving them from the lifeline, I saw a HOLE. Not an unusually large yarn over, but a HOLE. And two tiny little dropped stitches inside it.

WAY down below the lifelines, near row 5 or 7, by my estimate.

Somehow, despite my careful counting, despite my life lines, despite EVERYTHING I have done to make this work, there were two dropped stitches. Impossible! Except...I did remember thinking that there was one place where the yarn split a bit and the stitches were on the thin side. Apparently it was too thin and it let go.

I am telling myself to be grateful it happened when I was only 18 rows from the start, but still.

I think the Stole of Evil knows I'm trying to conquer it and it's FIGHTING BACK. I'm going to sit down with it today for a few hours and have a stern talk with it. If it still can't behave, I'm afraid I'm going to have to put it in the naughty closet with the other bad projects until it has had enough time to think about its bad behavior and reconsider.

Do you hear me, Stole of Evil? This is your last chance before I hibernate you or possibly even trade you to someone else for better yarn that will behave. Don't mess with me!