It should've been done by now

One of my mystery projects should have been off the needles by now. I don't even have a good explanation for why I've had such problems with it, but it very much reminded me of something The Yarn Harlot posted on her blog:

Every once in a while I get into a thing with my knitting. I don't know what happens, but it's like I knit like an idiot and can't pull my head out of my arse, and I either make mistake after mistake or generate problem after problem and I can't seem to stop.

Now, she was making a complicated lacy shawl and my project is much, much simpler. And I don't generally use the word arse. But otherwise, that seems an incredibly fitting description of one of my recent knitting nights.

The majority of the project has been going along just fine. There's just this one part where my brain just will not cooperate. There's even something about the way the directions are written that even if I stare at them I just don't process it correctly. I went through it the first time I came to that part, struggled for a bit and then figured it out. Then, probably all of a week later when I got to that part again... whammo! Whatever memories I had of how I'd solved my brain fart before had been magically erased.

I would get started easily enough and then find out I somehow ended on a purl row instead of a knit row. I'd magically end up with one too many or one too few stitches. I would get part way in, find out it looked wrong, rip out a ways, vow to try it again in a different way, then notice that I didn't actually do it a different way. Rip back again. Knit to about the same point, still wrong. Try something that didn't really seem to match the instructions but might look OK, no, still ugly. After a couple hours of struggling and having re-knit the same 10-15 rows at least 9 times I finally just put the project down and switched to my other project for a few rows just so that I wouldn't be too disgusted with myself to get to sleep.

Luckily I woke up the next day with determination to search for better explanations of the technique online. I found a pictorial version that really helped and then quickly got past that part in one simple try that night. Phew! So, once I finish up the knitting and give the mystery project to its intended recipient I'll make sure to link to the page that helped my feeble brain get past the hiccups that reading text just didn't fix.