Good grief, what happened?

Ok, here's what you can do:

Wind the yarn that you frogged around the skein.  That's what I always do when I've frogged or tinked something and I've never had much of an issue.

Knit a swatch in garter stitch (all knit stitches) and one all in purl stitches so that you can get the hang of working those two stitches separately.  I think that part of the issues you're having might be that you're trying to put stitches together too soon.

Invest in a darning needle and run a line of thread through the last row you KNOW you did right before you continue.  That way if you screw up you won't have to frog the whole thing.

As far as putting the needle back into live stitches after you've frogged, well, you just thread it through.  Once you come to knit (or purl) the stitches it'll be obvious if you have the twisted or not - and you'll be able to untwist them using the right needle.  You slip the stitch off with the right needle by inserting it into the FRONT of the stitch, slipping it onto the right needle, then replacing it back on the left needle where it belongs - and then you can knit it.

If you are ever, ever within an hour or so of St Louis, give me a shout and I'll come meet you and we'll have a knitting lesson.  I think that'd be kinda fun...

And here i thought we had a pirate blog on the go!!

What she said.......a day late. Sorry.

Thanks. I followed her advice and wound it around the skein. Works great. I really need to learn how to roll it into one of those nifty center pull balls.

I did finally figure out where my mistakes were coming from. It was all in the knit stitches. I was sometimes not inserting the needle properly and was picking up more than just that center strand that you actually want. It was causing a twisted stitch and increased stitch count. Once I figured out what I was doing wrong it was fairly simple to watch for, learn to feel when it wasn't right, and correct it.

I've realized that it's impossible to never make any mistakes so I learned how to fix the mistakes I was making. Now that I can actually fix the mistakes it's going much better. When I go to make a knit stitch and it doesn't feel right I just stop, remove the needle, and start it again. It seems to be working.

But now that I've solved that repeating mistake I'm sure I can come up with a few new ones.

I have a short darning needle and have started weaving in a lifeline as Dharma helpfully suggested. That should help a lot if I need to unravel a section. I'm just removing and reweaving it every couple dozen rows or so.