Yarnification

Progress so far:
Last night I started out with a different pattern than what I’d picked out because I left the original pattern at work (oops). After doing the first six rows three times (twice because I have not mastered the art of retrieving a dropped stitch and once because everything just suddenly went haywire) and becoming unexpectedly thwarted at the same place each time, I grew to hate that pattern with the fire of a thousand suns. That’s about what I expected to happen, really. Also the pattern would have made a dishcloth that was about 10½ inches square and I really prefer a much smaller one.

Then I dug out my Reader’s Digest Complete Guide to Needlework. I picked out a pattern stitch (the chevron seed stitch pattern, I think, but I don’t have the book with me so I can’t say for sure). Well, actually I kept dithering, so I showed a page to Don and told him, “Here, pick out something on this page. But not the second one, because I don’t think I can do that.” The one he picked was the one I was leaning toward, so it all worked out.

This is the first time I’ve ever tried to knit anything other than garter stitch or stockinette. I took the pattern stitch in the book and just added a knit to the beginning and end of each row because if I try to start a row in purl, it’s really not a pretty sight.

I’m something like eight rows into it, and I’ve developed a problem. Here’s the whole thing (ooh! lookee! you can see the chevrons kinda-sorta starting to build up!):

And here’s one that shows the problem (there’s another problem—or twelve— that you can probably see, but I’m most concerned about the hole):

What’s up with that hole? What did I do? Okay, I can tell you this much:
1) Somewhere around the row where the hole formed, I had to undo bunch of stitches because I miscounted the knits and the purls. I’m not real comfortable with doing that in knitting—I end up dropping stitches and scrapping the whole thing and starting over. (So you begin to see why I’ve never finished a knit project, ever, right?)
2) Also somewhere around that row, I discovered I had 35 stitches, as opposed to the 34 stitches I was supposed to have. I couldn’t figure out exactly where I went wrong and said to hell with it and just knit the last two stitches on that row together because that’s where I was when I discovered there was an extra stitch.

So what happened there? Should I scrap it since I’m not too far in and start over? The danger there is that I’m expecting to conjure up this perfect dishcloth with no mistakes in it, and I could spend the next week doing six rows and then starting over. But that hole—that’s pretty awful. (Also the yarn seems to be feeling a bit overwrought from being knitted over and over again; if I start again I’m going to have to come up with some different yarn.)

I’m tempted to just keep going since I know I could start and make a mistake and start over and make a mistake ad infinitum and never get this thing done. Am I expecting too much for a first project? Is this why I’ve never finished a knit project before?

I also wanted to link to this post by Beadlizard about ergonomics and whatnot because I should really go back and re-read it once a day.