Obstacles in Crafting

The last couple of days have been a bit frustrating craft wise. First of all, most of my projects fell through. Stuffs did not turn out, the way I imagined. Probably I need better planning/ pattern making ideas. Secondly, I started to re-learn a new skill: knitting. I picked up some sock weight yarn and knitting needles, expecting to produce something awe-inspiring. I kinda forgot, it doesn't work that way. When learning something new, you have to start from the basics. My eagerness to skip couple of lessons, resulted in sloppy work. Besides, my fingers were used to crochet for so long that holding needles in both hands turned out to be a completely new and confusing experience. All the negativity aside, I do admire my approach of 'full steam ahead'. After struggling with couple of size 3 needles, I managed to pull of a semi decent swatch of a complicated (to me) lace/ripple pattern. This was supposed to be a scarf. But of course, I lost patience.

After that, I decided to work on something that only involves knit and purl stitches. Also, I wanted to test drive my new circular needles. So, I started to make this cowl, with random colored stripes. Now if I only could stop it from rolling on to itself. Any ideas, dear knitters?

I DID manage to finish one new crochet project. A set of coasters. Inspired by these hemp baskets. Lovely, eh? The pattern (coming soon!) is a little bit different than the basket.

Have you hit a wall lately in creativity department? Any tips on how to develop a new skill? Please, do share. I'd love to hear from you!