Your notes were spot-on. Mea Culpa on the $1 and $2 part.

One caveat to your corrected code was another oversight on my part in my more brief explanation of the rationale for my code segment (which reminded me why I did it the way I did in the first place): each record "may" contain more than one "image: /path..." key-value pair, which is what requires reading ahead to the "----" line before returning to the outside control loop. Your version will just fine the next "image:" key, which would have been the right thing to do if it weren't for that condition.

Anyway, all's well now.