The Case of the Missing Stitch

I was working on the red-red-red sweater/hoodie last night and, as is my wont, I decided to count stitches to make sure there were still 190 on the needles. Oops. Only 189. Since I am counting-challenged, I checked again. Still 189. I inspected the fabric, looking in vain for the dropped stitch. Was I blind? Had I miscounted from the start, and on every recounted round since? It was driving me mad, so I gave up and went to bed.

This afternoon, I decided I would find that missing stitch if it killed me. I gathered some notions to help mark off the stitches and was about to start parsing the whole thing, when I decided to count stitches one more time. 190. Hmmm. I told you I was counting-challenged! In my defense, last night I was coming down with a cold, which necessitated staying home from work today to sleep away the germs. So, either I miscounted, or the missing stitch magically appeared after being AWOL for almost 24 hours.

A little tired of the red-red-red, I switched back to the Trekking socks (remember those? I have been neglecting them of late.) I had started the gusset decreases on one sock, and decided to pick up the gusset stitches on the other before continuing with any decreases. Believe is or not, somehow in the process of picking up stitches for the gusset, I managed to lose a stitch on not one, but both socks. This won't be a problem until I reach the toe decreases, where the instep will have 39 stitches and the sole only 38. Maybe if I sleep on this problem, the missing stitches will magically appear. Again.