Spoke to soon

I was asked by a family friend to knit two baby cardigans for a friend of hers. No problem! I thought. They're for babies, hence they are small and easy to make. WRONG!

I have come to the sleeve part of the first cardigan and figured to save myself time I would knit them at the same time. In hindsight that was a bad idea. Instructions say to "Work 41 rows, inc 1 sts at each end of 5th and every following 18th row." I should have 50sts in the end. So I started knitting, then realized that I might want to start marking off my rows so I know when I need to increase. After a bit I counted my rows in my knitting only to realize that without paying attention I had knitted on sleeve 1 more then sleeve 2. Easy enough fix; I just had to knit the same rows on sleeve 2 and I'd be okay. Mind you, this happened like 3 times. I finally had all my increases done, and was told to "work without further increases until pieces measures 6inch" Done! At this point I was feeling confident and proud. I could totally get everything knitted tonight. Totally.

Then I was supposed to decreases one stitch on each end of the next 8 rows for the shoulder shaping. I should have 34 stitches on the needles afterwards. I lost track of my decreases and figured that as long as I was doing one decrease at each end I could just count stitches and figure out where I was. Yeah....sleeve 1 contained 31 stitches and sleeve 2 contained 36 stitches. Now I'm feeling a bit frustrated, and decided to just tink back each sleeve until I get back to 50 sts, and I'll do the decreases again. Which brings us to now....sleeve 1 (which is the one that has been tinked back already) now has 43 stitches...and I have tinked back all the decrease rounds. WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO MY OTHER 7 STITCHES?! I can only assume that aliens took them away. The same aliens that keep drinking my beer, 'cause I had a full bottle when I last blinked.