The old "two steps forward, one step back" dance

Sometimes things work out great in Craft-Land and other times not so great.

What's going great:

• Officially finished with the baby booties: sewed them up and they are ready to be sent out with the hat.
• Started a small cross-stitch project to do at lunchtime: "C is for Kitty-Cat" by Sweetheart Tree. It's a perfect lunchtime project because it's a sampler of cat motifs - it's easy to do one motif in a short period of time.
• Played around with intarsia a little: I have an idea for a hat for my niece's kids and needed to figure out how it works.

What's not so great:

I'm having a terrible time keeping the right count on the Jaywalker pattern using the Trekking XXL yarn. I keep losing a stitch somewhere and have to frog back to find the error. It's really hard to "unknit" this sock at the decrease points. Since I kept making this error over and over (and I thought I was counting right), the only thing I could think of was that this yarn was not the right one for me to use with this pattern - it may be because it's a lot lighter weight than I've used before or simply because it's a dark color and hard to deal with at night; I don't know. Don't get me wrong; I like the yarn and I like the pattern, but I think that they don't blend together well for me. Maybe I'll try it again when I have more experience knitting with the lighter weight yarns.

Yesterday afternoon, I pulled out what I had done and put aside Trekking XXL yarn (there's the one-step-back part). I decided to try the pattern in Socks That Rock (in Lagoon) to see if I have any better luck. I cast on with STR while watching the Oscars and managed to get through the ribbing and two pattern repeats. It's going a lot better in this yarn, so I'll keep at it.