I need some encouragement

or…

Am I Really That Bad at This?

I'm working on another Konnor hat, this time the Jacques Cousteau Hat (named that, I think, because there are photos of the man wearing one that looks like it). I'm making it out of some lovely Patons Silk Bamboo, in Plum, which is a soft wine color. I cast on and knit the bottom five inches of it just fine. Then I started on the crown, which I've knitted now four times.

If you're a knitter: I keep screwing up the decreases. The first two times I attempted it, I put one of the markers in the wrong spot. (Yeah, okay. But it was the end of the round, and just two stitches away from the beginning-of-round marker, so apparently I thought it wouldn't matter. It did.) That caused a kind of cascading failure. I finally realized the problem, ripped it out and placed all four markers correctly. Now all I have to do is work up to two stitches before the marker, SSK, slip the marker and knit the knits and purl the purls until two stitches before the next marker. But, apparently, I just sail past markers at random intervals without doing the decrease, because when I stop to count the stitches between the markers, it's rare that there are the same number in all four sections.

If you're not a knitter: I keep screwing it up. It appears I have the attention span of a gnat, and just stop paying attention. Frequently.

So I rip it out to that same bottom five inches, then re-knit it. Occasionally I drop a stitch in my struggles and have to get out the crochet hook and painstakingly thread it up to the knitting needle again, hoping I keep all the knit stitches as knits and the purl stitches as purls. I was doing really well last night, counting every few rounds to make sure all four sections were even, when I got over confident and went a few rounds without double checking. Yeah, you guessed it.

So I'm here to freely admit this stupid hat is kicking my butt. It shouldn't; it's just not that hard. But…

If you're a knitter: …I can't seem to pull off four evenly-spaced decreases for ten rounds in a row.

If you're not a knitter: …I keep screwing it up. (I know, I said that already. But it bears repeating.)

So please give me some encouragement, if you've got it. Or suggest a new hobby.