Making the list, checking it twice, and coming up with alternate plans...

As I fight off Startitius (terrible crafty urge to start something new you just saw someone knitting, saw the pattern for, or "there was this yarn...")...and make the list of the stuff I want to finish for the Holidays...
I can't help but think of the Yarn Harlot and the Schedule her friend Lene put together for Mz. Stephanie so she had a shot at finishing all sorts of knitted wonders before Christmas arrived.
(There's a hilarious blog or bit in one of her books about the kind of madness that over takes our favorite Yarn Harlot during the holidays - brought on by frantic knitting and inevitability of the projects we don't get done...)

Now, I am a known list maker. Love crossing things off the list.
However, I knit at about a 10th of the speed of the Yarn Harlot (on a good day) and she seems to have a lot more time to knit, although she's got a serious writing career, several children, and a variety of interesting social obligations. Or maybe she's just a profoundly more experienced knitter with warp-speed knitting capabilities...

SO - I'm trying to interject some reality into the to-do-for-the-Holidays Knit list.
Mostly I have succeeded in scaring myself.
This is about the time I have the reality check and start considering some non-knitted gifting.
No, I'm not too panicked - I try to shop for stuff year round so I have a fair gift stash to pull from.
But the pressure is there...and then...I thought I'd found the answer!!

I took a class last week at a LYS - Knitted Ornament Covers.
I'd gotten happy feet thinking "These would be great gifts..."
I'm a little disappointed. The teacher had quickly jotted down a "better" way to do two of the pattern rows on a slip of paper for each student. Seems it may have actually been a pattern correction. (sigh) Of course, I did the first ornament cover based on the Original Pattern. I'd glanced at the original pattern and the "better" way and thought "Both seem fine...?".




I'm hoping I can place the missing beads with duplicate stitch.







Having gotten a grip on "better" = corrected, I used the slip of paper to replace the 2 pattern rows in the 2nd part of our homework the Zig Zag Ornament Cover. (teacher said it works for both patterns).




Serves me right.









I'm planning to sit down and figure out why I seem to be missing stitches and some beads are scrunched together...
This definitely could be user-error...but I'm a little disillusioned.
Do I want to try and invest time to make these as gifts? I'm already "0" for 2.

I go to the 2nd half of the class tomorrow - let's hope for a revelation.
(And maybe a corrected set of patterns...)