Knit and Thanks share three letters

Yes, it's Thanksgiving, and I'm thankful for so many things, including:

unblocked, unfinished, without sleeves

Finished the knitting on the skirt of the baptismal gown!  I used my own lower edging since the pattern was indecipherable (to me):

Bind off 4 sts, *(wrap yarn around needle and sso) 4 times (picot), 

k2 tog, sso, bind off 10 sts; rep from *, end by binding off rem sts.

I couldn't find any sources that agreed on what "sso" is supposed to be -- slip, slip, over by the looks of it, but I can't see how repeating that + a yo would create a picot.  Sooooo I just completely ignored that and did:
    rd 1: knit all
    rd 2: *yo, k2tog; rep from *
    Bind off loosely using suspended bindoff.
The result is simple enough not to take away from the rest of the skirt, but still fancy for a special occasion.

After 4.5 repeats of the leaf lace pattern, I had changed my mind about the designer (who shall remain nameless on this blog, but if you link to the pattern, I guess you'll find out!).  But now I've started the sleeves, and all the goodwill built up during the skirt work is gone again -- on. crack.       allegedly.        It's the eyelet pattern.  Plus shaping.  Again.  For some reason, I find it to be insanely difficult.  It's made me do math, people... MATH.  And I'm totally stuck now.  And even if I work this one sleeve out, I still have to make another one exactly like.  And... ugh!  I'm done on this for the day.  I'll be bringing my secret project to the in-laws' house.