Knitting Woes

I've been working my little fingers to the bone on the soldier's scarf. As you know, this is my first real knitting project. I've worked up to the warp-speed of one little knitted row every 10 minutes. This works out to about an inch an hour. An inch an hour! If I were crocheting this thing I estimate I'd be working more like an inch every ten minutes!! And will a knit scarf be appreciated six times as much as a crocheted scarf will? Absolutely not. In all honesty- the soldier isn't super likely to express a ton of gratitude anyway. He's very much the typical male in that way.

On top of this realization, I discovered I screwed up... oh... about 10 hours worth of work ago! Just three little knits that should have been perls. I can FEEL IT when I run my fingers down the beautiful cords. This is highly upsetting. I've heard you can rip down the columns and use a crochet hook to fix such mistakes, but having never done it and faced with putting ten hours worth of work at risk, I think I'm just going to leave it. It will at least be evidence that I am, in fact, a newbie at this knitting thing.

It is beautiful though. Since it's been so difficult, I keep pulling it out to get reassurance under the guise of thinking it's not manly enough. Obviously it's manly enough- it's mostly black and fairly simple. Still- every single time I am with a man I pull it out and ask if they like it. I've had very very high reviews, so that's nice.

All in all I'm about a third of the way thorough. I'll probably put it down sometime after this skine, since I won't actually send it out to him until next fall. I've started a cowl for myself, which I'll share soon. I'd also really like to make myself a blanket. That's a lot of work for a selfish endevor, so we'll see.