Momentary heart stoppages

I've been working out the kinks on a sweater pattern.  So far, it's been mostly smooth.  There have been little errors that my beta-knitters have been finding for me.  Nothing major.

I've been reknitting the sweater with my testers.  I got to the end of the body and started on the border, only to get to the end and find myself off by one stitch. 

This is quite possibly the first time my knitting has actually made me sit and cry.  I thought I'd made a mistake in the pattern.  And if it was a mistake in the pattern, it would have been a rather fundamental one.  I thought I was going to have to rip the whole thing and start over again.  Since I'm on a really tight deadline, this thought left me pretty upset.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that if the first part worked (which it did) and the second part worked (which it did), then the border ought to have worked.  So since parts a and b were working, then part c OUGHT to be working.  So I went and recounted and discovered...the mistake wasn't back at row one.  It was in the row I'd just knit.  Instead of knitting one stitch and purling the next, I'd knit one and purled one all along and then accidentally knit two instead of knitting one and purling the next, throwing everything else off by one stitch.

Instead of ripping back 50 rows, I only had to rip back 50 stitches.  My stomach is back where it belongs now and my heart is beating properly again.  I'm very glad I recounted before sending off my devastated email to my testers calling a work stoppage on the project.