Frustrert frue

Good gracious. I am so cranky right now. I could just about bite off my own toe out of sheer irritation. I can't remember the last time I was this disgruntled with the world. I think that I am, ahem, entering the early phases of becoming a woman of a certain age, and today the whole hormone thing just really snuck up on me.

For starters, I ordered the wrong 1925 edition of Bjerregaard's Fjeldeventyret from the library, so I couldn't get any work done on my conference paper today. To make matters worse, my other solace in life beside academic work (my knitting) is in a bad place. Witness the following:

1. I tried picking up 153 stitches along one side of Bridgewater and ended up with 162. I am now paralyzed on that project with no idea what went wrong.
2. My lost crochet hook means I can't console myself with making a simple dishrag right now.
3. My brown tweed aran WIP feels too daunting to pick up. I would have to hunch over the pattern and really concentrate to get back into it. 
4. I thought the solution to my woes would be to wind the Shetlandsuld into balls. Winding is mindless and fun on my ball winder, except that the one color that was in a skein turned out to be pure evil. I had to break it four times because it got so incredibly tangled (and mind you I am usually very good at untangling yarn). I was not happy, and was on the verge of either screaming or crying, but managed to contain my frustration. 
5. Meanwhile, as I was looking at the Shetlandsuld colors I bought and the fair isle pattern I was hoping to work from, I started to suspect that there are some pretty significant weaknesses in the combination. I'm not at all sure the colors will work, and then what am I supposed to do? Buy more yarn? Find another pattern? Maybe just make Estonian mittens? I don't know, but it's too overwhelming to contemplate.

I'm off to crawl under the duvet with Den orolige mannen and escape into the world of Kurt Wallander and Soviet era submarines, and hope for a better day tomorrow...