If You Don't Knit, You Can Probably Skip This. If You Do, You Probably Know This Feeling

I'm knitting a new project, probably the most complicated pattern that I've ever done.

I started it on December 22, and it was going pretty well.  I got about 18 rows into it, and on Christmas morning I discovered a mistake.  On Row 12.  I started to pull it back and in the process realized that I'd also dropped a stitch.

On Row 5.  

As a point of reference, that was over 2000 stitches and probably 5 hours of work that I'd messed up.  

I pulled it apart and restarted it from scratch.  Because I was already familiar with the pattern at this point, it only took me until December 30 to get caught back up.

This morning, I found another mistake.  Thankfully, it only ended up being a couple of rows back, so it only took a few hours to work it back and start forward (and no dropped stitches anywhere to be found).  But dang if my heart didn't drop a little when I realized that I'd messed up the pattern.  But I tell ya, I felt like a pro when I was able to fix it!

There was supposed to be some sort of life lesson here, and I'm pretty sure I was going somewhere with a punchline, but for the life of me I cannot remember what it was.  I wrote this at about 5 AM, so my memory is a little hazy.  But it was going to be great, I'm sure.

Oh well, enjoy this picture of the vending machine at my work. (No, that's not my hand.)