Boiled A**

I can't thank Claudia enough for the delightful name she used to describe her unblocked MS3: "boiled a**" just paints a picture that delights the soul and inspires the mind to new heights. Or, it's completely descriptive and I can't get it out of my mind. One or the other.

Last night I realized that my MS3, up to row 128 now and proud of it, was not even boiled a**, it was the sauerkraut accompanying the a**. It was crap, doo doo, ca ca, and whatever other words you want to use to describe something that must be killed.

I agonized all day at work, consulting friends by email and constructing elaborate justifications for why I could live with a very clear error back around the beginning of Clue 2 (which started, you remember, with row 101). A zig that should have zagged, a series of right slanting decreases that, briefly, momentarily, fleetingly, slanted left.

I had just about convinced myself that no one would notice once it was blocked within an inch of its life. Then I showed it to Debra tonight at Colony Square, and her pitying smile was enough to tell me: this thing had to die, or at least a severe amputation was in order.

Voila, the amputation. Twenty-three rows gone in a trice, as it were. Thank goodness for the lifeline, sitting at about row 109, because it gave me a baseline. Then I tinked from there down to row 105:



Another row completed and the error is gone, stitch count is accurate, and I'm exhausted. I'm tired of this thing and I feel like I've wasted a big hunk of time, but at least tomorrow I start clean on it again and no agonizing.