counting with position()

Hi

I am trying to count nodes after a certain node and am having
difficulties with it.
Here is my snippet:

<level1>
<item>Sample</item>
         <level2>
<item>Sample</item>
<product>sample prod1</product>
<product>sample prod2</product>
<product>sample prod3</product>
               <level3>
                  <item>Sample</item>
                  <item>Sample</item>
                </level3>
          </level2>
<level1>

So I am trying to count all 'product elements after <item> in the
template level2.

Here is a part of my xslt.

<xsl:template match="level2">

<xsl:if test="following-sibling::*[1][self::product[preceding-sibling::*[1][self::item]
and following-sibling::*[self::product[(position()=last()) and
not(string(following-sibling::*[1]))]]]]">
					<xsl:variable name="count"
select="count(./following-sibling::product[position()!=last()])"/>
					<xsl:if test="$count>= 1">
						<xsl:apply-templates
select="./following-sibling::product[position() &lt; $count]"/>
					</xsl:if>
				</xsl:if>

</xsl:template>


I am trying to find out if there is more than one 'product' after
<item> and  if that occurs at the end of <item> just before <level3>
starts. The transformation is a lot more complicated than just this,
since these are all nested levels and this kind of structure can occur
in an another <level3> element down the node tree.
After I check that, I count the product elements and transform them.

But when I use ./following-sibling::product[position() &lt; $count],
it only shows 1 product element.

How do I count all the product elements and display until the last one?