23 days....

Yesterday the servers went down at work. I have literally over 100's of cases to complete today. I had no worries until the power supply in my computer went out. So I had to wait a couple of hours until I got a new one. During that time I was tasked with getting a fellow employee away from his phone and to keep him occupied between 9-10. He was to get an award and needed to be free to do so. I am lucky this guy loves to talk but it sure was hard trying not to get his suspicions up while I just stood there and chatted about non important- non work related things. LOL!

Now on the Christmas presents front it is not looking too good. The tote bag for my sister-in-law just does not look right. It looks too short. I am starting to work on the handles now but even with following the instructions I am not ending up with the correct number of stitches. I have come to the conclusion that this pattern is flawed. The pattern has me make a decrease in 2 dc, then make 19 dc and then another decrease in the next 2 dc. This leaves me with a total of 21 dc right? The pattern says I should have 23. Do I count the one decrease as one dc or two dc? I am wondering if I actually need to make 2 decreases. This is what the pattern says. Please someone help in figuring out how I am supposed to end up with 23 dc at the end? With this pattern the the ch 3 is supposed to count as a dc.

Here are the instructions:

Ch 3, dec 1 dc in next 2 dc, dc in each of next 19 spaces, dec 1 dc in next 2 dc, dc in next space - 23 dc.......................OKAY I am an idiot! As I am writing this I realize that it does equal 23 dc. Urgh!!!! Maybe my problem was trying to work on it after 12 hours of being at work!

Okay! I need to get away from this computer. My butt has not left my chair for 4 hours and I need a break!