very not sick and knit

okay maybe not very not sick, but still pretty "not sick".

I thought I was getting better from not being sick, but coincidentally the only day I really felt pretty good was the day after I got 11 hours straight in bed and actually slept most of them. Since then I've been back to my 7-and-under sleep plan, and have been feeling rather worse. Today I was coughing up a lung, off and on, and hoarse off and on, and feeling generally poopy. We ended up calling off tonight's small group Bible study because I really wasn't up for the cleaning/prep for it, much less sitting and trying to cough politely instead of hackingly. I'm sure it would've been hard for The Grand Lunar to lead over my hacking. Yesterday the kids kept looking at me funny and saying, "Are you alright?" Plus there was the whole spewing germs around thing.

The final straw, though, was when The Grand Lunar got some mysterious stomach pain. I'm hoping it's not appendicitis. I have no real reason to think it IS, but then again it was a strange, fairly sudden, fairly intense pain. So. We'll see. Anyway without him to be my right-hand-man for getting children-and-home ready for the study, we copped out. I feel bad calling things off (sorry, lurker-friend! I was looking forward to chatting with you!!) when I don't meet the 'sick criteria' but I think I at least quality for 'Mom's not sick only because mom's don't get sick' and there's no such rule that The Grand Lunar can't be sick, his family had different rules and can count stomach pain and coughs as sick.

So what was I saying? I'm a little in a fog here. I tried hard to nap, but couldn't sleep, which is amazingly weird for me. Maybe not being able to sleep qualifies as sick? I don't know why I couldn't sleep, I wasn't even as over-caffeinated as usual. But since The Grand Lunar obviously felt poorly AND can sleep at any time, I figured he would be better suited to capitalize on the nap potential than me. So I'm up.

So here's a question for the knitterly folk out there.

If I don't like something now, two handfuls of rows into it, does that mean I won't like it? Or is it hard to tell early on?

The beginning of the poncho.
It's knit from the neck down, all in the round.
Those holes at the centerish are the yarn-over pattern
that goes down the front and back.
You can't see it very well here.

Here's the rub: I'm knitting like I cook. I read sixty bazillion recipes patterns for ponchos and finally picked one I liked, but I'd previously liked ones with big lacy "open knit" looks, so I'd previously bought big fat size 19 needles - the roundy-ones. The pattern is NOT for gihugic needles, but I figure since it's a poncho it'll change the look but the size is fairly flexible ANYway, another reason I liked the pattern. I mean, I'm confident it will make a perfectly useable poncho.

I like the big fat needles because it knits up really fast and I feel speedy.

And I like the color of the yarn. It's bright and a little bit shiny-sparkly.

but I don't like:

1.) the feel of the yarn. Eminoodle picked it, and it's 100% acrylic. Worsted weight. It has a cheesy old 70's feel to me. It's pretty, but it just doesn't feel nicey.

2.) I'm not sure I like how the pattern looks with the extra "openness" of the big fat needles. It looks so much less tidy than the pattern. But of course it does, with the big fat needles. And in general I like the "open knit" things I've seen, but they've all been with fancy-pantsy yarns. And I'm afraid the YO pattern will just look like it was poorly knit or is unravelling or something.

3.) with the circular needles I'm having a hard time smoothing it out and thinking about what it'll look like. It seems like it's twisted, although it's not twisted that I can figure out - when I try to untwist it, it gets worse and I can see an obvious twist. But maybe it's just because the needles were looped around in the package and are stuck in loopity shape?

ANYway ... I'm debating frogging it and starting again on smaller needles.
OR working in some fancy yarn. I figure I could start it in the middle somewhere, so it won't be obvious near the YO pattern, and go around a few knits with fluffy pinkity yarn? Make some stripes now and then, as I feel like it?

(shrugs vaguely)

Maybe both.

What's your experience, knitters? Can you usually tell right away if something's a "keeper" or do you sometimes need to press on and give it a chance to grow?