Vintage Purls wrote:
Melinda I feel you adopt a very pesimistic attitude to the advice you
are given, I find it very frustrating. It seems to me that you don't

I'm sorry. It may sound that way, but it's actually halfway between
paranoid and terrified (combined with a perennial difficulty in making
decisions). I come from a long lime of obsessive-compulsive
perfectionists and I feel like to at least half, if not most, of them I
never quite measure up, and I'm afraid it has colored my life a bit.
And with knitting right now I am a burned child (the failed sock that it
took me two months to complete and it didn't fit) determined to get over
my fear but needing some baby steps first.

Actually, a baby sweater sounds like an EXCELLENT idea, because my
neighbor is pregnant with her first child and if it turns out well, I
would have a nice baby gift -- and if it didn't, I might still be able
to make a second one before the baby is born LOL.

I'd rather make a mistake on a dishcloth or a baby sweater and only have
10 or 20 not-that-wide rows to rip out than make a sweater in my SSBBW
size and have oodles and oodles of frog-stitching to do. I wouldn't
mind making a poncho or a shawl, because I would wear them at home, but
most of the patterns I see are for fancy stitches and I don't know if I
want to do that yet.

I am taking your advice to heart and thank you for it.