New Year's Resolution revisited

You may remember that one of my New Year's knitting resolutions was to learn Entrelac knitting. I originally thought I'd make a scarf as my practice piece, but the truth is, I have a lot of scarves. So I decided instead to make a case for my Alpha-Smart keyboard.

Teaching myself entrelac was a real challenge. First, I looked online for directions and patterns. I found plenty of them. I had a skein of Red Heart variagated yarn I bought at a church rummage sale for 25 cents. I sat down with the first set of directions and began.

And was hopelessly lost by the second step. Ripped it out and started over. Again, everything was soon a tangle.

I decided I needed different directions. Started over. Another mess.

And so it went. But I'm stubborn enough I refused to give up. After much trial and error I figured it out

So here are the lessons I learned in my adventure in Entrelac:

1. Learning a new skill with cheap yarn is less intimidating. I had no qualms about ripping out and starting over multiple times. (And the yarn I used is really quite lovely.)

2. If one set of directions doesn't work for you, try another. I had success with the third set of directions I printed out. Different people have different ways of explaining things and this is the one that clicked with me.

3. Remember to breathe! I tense up when learning a new skill and have to remind myself to relax and have fun with it.

Right now, I'm taking a class to learn to knit two socks on two circulars at my LYS (Yes -- we finally HAVE a LYS here in the hinterlands, a very nice one.) Another challenging technique, but I think I'm finally getting the hang of it.

So -- what new skills have you tackled lately?