One Big Mess

I finally got up the courage to start a cardweaving project tonight. It's not the leaves on the vine pattern I had intended but a (supposedly) simpler project from this set. The one I had chosen was the second one from the top, and I was trying the four foward, four backward that would result in the diamond pattern.

Yeah.

Apparently that is wayy beyond my skill set, because not only did it take me over an hour to sort the ridiculous mess that occurred when I attempted to thread the cards for the first time (and I still don't know if I threaded them right, S versus Z threading and all that); once I finally got started, the tension was all wrong and the pattern wasn't coming out at all. Just some weird flecks of blue-and-white that looked like a messy cool braid of a thousand strands, but not the pattern I was going for at all. I was going to stick with it and just see how it went along as I got further, but then one of the outside cards got two of its strands knotted together on one side. O.O Needless to say, I put it all down right quick.

I've been watching videos and reading every site that has anything to say on the matter, but apparently I didn't learn enough because the book learning is definitely not translating here. I wish I could get someone to teach me, but that's not going to happen anytime quick. Grr. Perhaps another go tomorrow or next week when I get up the courage to try again. And I still don't know how to thread S versus Z!