Tangled Branches

I am feeling a little discouraged at the moment. I think I am on my fifth attempt to get through the 6-row pattern for Branching Out correctly. I plunged in rather ambitiously, starting with the lovely mohair straight away. Bad idea - very difficult to rip out mistakes in mohair. I was also cursing my cheapie 4mm needles which are impossibly blunt. It was a rude shock to go from my lovely pointy knitpicks to these, especially when the pattern calls for you to knit 3 together!

So after the third or fourth attempt, I switched to some 8ply practice yarn and my 4.5mm knitpicks. Much easier. But I still somehow ended up with the wrong number of stitches by the fifth pattern row. Sigh! I shall persevere, but what I really should do today is take up the hem of my bellydancing costume in preparation for our peformances in a few weeks.