What's that knitting rule again?

I am knitting Fred a scarf.

I've been knitting for over a year now, and have managed to learn how to knit lace, and knit socks (which at one time seemed to me to be the pinnacle of difficulty; the idea of fair-isle was overwhelming), but this $%&*# scarf is driving me batty.

First, I was using icky acrylic camouflage yarn, because he digs the camo. He picked a five-cable braid that just wasn't showing up properly in the patterned yarn.

So we switched to a dark purple merino (yay!) and started over. It was curling in on itself, and he says he likes a scarf that lays flat, so I ripped it out and changed the design.

This time I got about 8 inches of the sucker done and ... dropped a stitch. I thought that I had picked it up properly, but after a couple more rows it was obvious that I had not, because the proper crosses just weren't there. I put in a life-line and frogged it back and picked up the correct number of stitches....and realized that I hated the way it looked. Seed stitch on either side, reverse stockinette, and the cable in the middle. Muh. It would have looked great if it were going to be part of an afghan or something else, but on it's own, it was just kind of meh.

Ribbit, ribbit, ribbit. Although I did get to play with my ball winder, so that was fun (Zoe liked it too).

As I was casting on this scarf for the fourth time he says "You know what I'd like? A sweater. A cashmere sweater. Black. With red celtic cable panels up the arms, and a red celtic design on the front."

*sigh*