Quitting Knitting

I really did think about quitting knitting. Each time was brief, but it did cross my mind. Multiple times. Day and night. I asked myself "Perhaps a hobby like underwater welding would be less frustrating?" All because of the Guernsey AKA Gansey. I had started the Guernsey no less than ten times and I was frustrated beyond belief that a highly anticipated project was going absolutely NO WHERE fast. Especially with the rapidly arriving deadline to have the sweater knit to the underarm gussets by the next Nihon Vogue Year 2 class which was scheduled the end of May. I was committed to knit the entire sweater by Continental style (new learnings for me since I don't usually knit that way) as most of the sweater (to the gussets) is knit in the round. I also wanted to try the very traditional Channel Island cast on which provides a durable, double stranded picot like edge. The actual cast on isn't all that complicated although one has to pay attention to the tension and keep 3 strands of yarn from tangling together. Read about it in a book and practiced it Continental method from a video on YouTube. All set. Or so I thought. Transferring the cast on stitches from one size needle to a smaller needle to knit the garter welt was my downfall. Every now and then, one of the nearly 300 stitches would drop off and unravel itself. Yikes. I'm sure someone, somewhere, knows how to recover by using a crochet hook to replicate a cast on stitch in the middle of a Channel Island sequence but self rescue was way beyond my capabilities. I had to start all over again from the very beginning. Multiple times. Finally got past the cast on and knit a few centimeters on the welt as well as initials. Moving right along, yes, Guernsey life was good! Uh oh, my knitting fabric seemed less "dense" than what Arlene and Candace's sweaters were like. And my gauge contrasted sharply from the recommended yarn gauge and what the expert's books advised. I decided to start over as I wanted the sweater to be as much like a traditional Fisherman's sweater as possible. Went from a size 4 (3.5mm) to a size 1 (2.25 mm) needle in order to get a gauge of between 6 and 9 stitches per inch. The next two iterations towards making progress were completely wasted because my cast on was twisted once I joined the stitches in the round. Fatal knitting mistake in which there is no recovery after the initial rounds. Even though I checked and rechecked, I didn't recognize the knitting was twisting until it was too late to save it. It was bunched up on 24 inch long needles and I missed a single twist at the join. All this after investing many hours into going round and round and round on needles as narrow as toothpicks. I abandoned the 24 inch circulars, discarded the Magic Loop method (sincere apologies to fellow Nihon classmate Sarah!) and purchased a 32 inch size one lace needle. Began again. Spent a weekend with other knitters, including fellow Nihon Vogue'rs Naomi and Melinda and in disbelief realized that my sweater was noticeably wider than one that was being knit for a lucky husband. Oh geez - what now? I had erroneously taken the gauge from a swatch that had been done with a size zero needle thus the calculations were completely off. I had too many gauge swatches and had gotten them mixed up. My sweater was several inches wider than it was supposed to be. Hours and hours lost and gone for good. Discouraged but not totally defeated I started again. Careful cast on, right gauge, correct calculations, a single needle and no twists. On my way. Guernsey life is good again.