Ugh. Who picked this denim yarn?

In June, I started work on a project that's been maturing in my stash for, oh, 6 years, called the OXO Gansey from a Rowan Denim leaflet. The sweater is for my spouse-o, who has been asking nicely for a sweater for several years now... call it 14. I put a bunch of obstacles in the way of this project (not sure what design to make, not enough yarn, worry about shrinkage...) which helped me stall for 5 years after buying the yarn. This year, I decided to force the issue by pledging that while watching Angel & Buffy on DVD, this would be my only knitting project. That way I could guarantee progress, right?.

We watched Buffy, season 6 in June and I started with the back. 41 cm later, I set it aside to ripen. OK, OK, I was stuck. But since we didn't have any Buffy or Angel to watch.. I was off the hook. Until this week.

Monday night, with a borrowed copy of Angel Season 3 in the house, I picked up the OXO. I've had three frustrating nights. This yarn is way too dark. There's a lighter color available.. why didn't I buy it?
I can barely see my stitches! Wednesday night I was trying to establish the actual OXO secion of the of the patterning. I knit exactly 4 rows in 2.5 hours, because I kept screwing up the pattern sections. Then I ripped out all but 1 row of my painful progress in the mistaken belief that I didn't have enough stitches. ARGH!

This morning, now that I know I have the pattern sections set up properly, I was able to do 6 rows of patterning in about an hour. Much much much better. Still too dark, but much better.