Knitting is Frustrating II: The Hourglass Sweater

I'm finally ready to talk about my other frustrating knitting project. As you may recall, I had started work about a month ago on the Hourglass Sweater from Last Minute Knitted Gifts. The body is knit in the round, as are the sleeves, and then you attach the sleeves to the body via a raglan-style stitch as you continue to knit the rest of the body in the round.

Everything was going fine until I got to the raglan decreases. The photo probably doesn't show it well enough, but if you have better eyesight than I, can you spot the problem below?

Here are the close-ups. You may have noticed that the right side decreases in a lovely left-leaning raglan slant.

And you may have noticed that the left side does not slant to the right.

As I was knitting this, I thought that things were a little off, but I have a really bad habit of realizing that something is not going well and just knitting anyway, hoping it will straighten itself out, until it gets to the point that there is no denying it anymore and something has to be done- usually frogging and starting over. (Yes, psych 101 analysts, this tendency could probably be a metaphor for life, too.)

There could be several reasons for this problem. I was doing it in the car, with no knitting references save the pattern book. For some reason, it does not include a stitch guide, so I had to remember what exactly "ssk" entailed. I'm thinking I guessed wrong, even though the right side looks fine. My other thought was that the pattern was wrong, and there are separate instructions for a right decrease and a left, though the book implies you can do the same for all sides. I've since checked the web and I've not seen anyone else have the same problem, so whatever it is, it is me. I left Hourglass at home in MN and I'm hoping that I will be ready to rip out all the yoke and do the sleeve attachment again when I return relaxed from my month-long vacation.

I usually do consult the web before starting a project to check for corrections or just to see if other people had problems or improvements, but for whatever reason, I did not do so with this one and I have learned my lesson. I will NOT start a project blind ever again- you have it here.