Lace Comes to a Screeching Halt

Last night I was happily knitting away on my lace shawl - which has now grown to twice the size of the last photo I posted. I got to the end of the row only to discover I didn't have enough stitches. Okay, no problem, I have made mistakes before, I will just look back along the row, find the mistake & correct it and move right along. Only problem is - no mistake. No mistake, but still not enough stitches. So at this point I decide to count the stitches on the needle. After counting three times and having hubby count once just to make sure I wasn't going insane I found out I am missing 17 stitches. 17 stitches!!! How the hell am I missing 17 stitches? I looked carefully at the whole shawl and can not see anything wrong. All of the holes are where they should be - line up neatly as they should. No dropped stitches.

So what to do now? I was too lazy to use a lifeline on a pattern this simple. It is easy to see what is going on in this pattern. Easy to tell what stitches should go on top of what stitches etc. Plus - every row I have done up until this row has worked out fine - pattern ended just where it should - no missing stitches. So should I back up and try to find 17 mistakes? At this point I don't see where there could be 17 mistakes. Wouldn't that be glaringly obvious? And of course I discovered this on a row which is on top of two knitted rows - which in lace world means that those two rows will tell you nothing in terms of finding a mistake. So I have to back out three rows stitch by stitch. Then I will take a look at the row preeceeding the knitted rows. If I can't find a mistake there, it looks like I am frogging the whole thing and starting over - with lifelines this time! (Although I swear I don't see how lifelines would have helped me in this case since up until this point every single row has counted out patternwise just fine!) ARRRGGGHH!

Despite it all - I still love lace.