That screeching sound you hear is the brakes

Being put on the Aleita Shell.

I had been cranking along in good style on this piece. Did both fronts, noticing and fixing my annoying edge mistake on the left front before it became visible, successfully negotiating neckline and armhole shaping without too much recounting and/or swearing. So I moved on to the back, feeling quite swell about how things were going.

I had noticed when I started the ribbing for the bodice that my stitch counts did not match the ones in the pattern. I don't know if I cast on a some extra stitches or if there's a mistake in the pattern, but in any event, I had an extra stitch on each front and two extra on the back.

This was not a big deal when working the fronts in pattern; I just kept that extra stitch as a purl on the right front and mirrored it on the left. But for the back, my mind apparently went on vacation stopped working had a serious brain fart, because I started the ribbing as directed in the pattern. It took me longer then I care to admit to realize that this meant that the ribbing on the back was shifted to one side by a stitch.

Being categorically averse to tinking unless there is no other option, I elected to soldier on, figuring that a one stitch shift wasn't going to be noticeable.

Can you see the storm clouds gathering? Yup, me too. Might be hail up there as well - best take cover.

This was the case until I got through the armhole decreases on the back. And I realized that on one side of the back, it looked like this: (I = knit stitch, O = purl stitch, offending stitches are blue):

IOOOOIOIOI

And on the other side it looked like this:

IOIOOOIOOOOI

It may be hard to visualize from those representations, but on one edge it looked like k1 p1 ribbing next to a large purl block, and on the other it was k1, p1, k1, p3, k1, purl block. Not a big difference, but for some reason, every time I did another right side row, it bothered me more and more.

Now the smart person would have stopped there (a couple inches into the armholes) and, either ripped back to the start of the bodice (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh hell no!), or dropped back the offending, miscentered k1 columns on the right side, replacing them with a purl column and shifting over the knit column to the right location. Guess what I did.

That's 12 inches of back ribbing. 12. One.Whole.Foot.

This is going to take a long time. 13 sets of columns to be fixed. I'm on number 5.

My armholes are 7 inches. I am not smart.