Feeling defeated by a sweater...

I'm feeling defeated by the February Lady Sweater. It is a fabulous pattern but this is my second attempt at it. My first attempt was a disaster - I didn't get the raglan increases right and my OCD wouldn't let it rest. So I frogged that version and started fresh with a different yarn. (The first yarn had too much of a halo).

So I made it to the sleeves this time. The pattern says to put the 63 live stitches from one sleeve back on the needles (after you have finished the body). Then you pick up nine stitches from the cast-on edge of the underarm. This was all successful. I triple checked my number of stitches and yes, I had 63 plus 9. I started knitting the gull lace pattern and when I got back around, I was one stitch short. So I backed out the stitches and started again. Same result. So I put that sleeve back on scrap yarn and started the other sleeve. Same problem. UGH!!!!!

After searching Ravlery and the designer's website, I appears I'm the only person in the universe that has tried to knit this sweater and had this problem. I will not be defeated. I have too much time and money invested in this sweater to give up. But I feel like I'm going crazy. Someone once told me that the definition of crazy was doing the same thing over and over again with the same result - and not a good result.

I will just have to live with garter stitch sleeves instead of gull lace sleeves.