Spring Forward

I started to knit a few days ago. My mother is a regular knitter and she always gets the Mary Maxim catalogue and I saw one sweater that I liked and I thought I'd try to make it myself as my mother always knitted things for me. I'm giving myself ample time to finish it and since it's a winter sweater, my goal is to finish it by October. I'm not sure if I want to work on it about 10 minutes a day or maybe pick a few days a week and work on it. I want to work on it consistently though.
I've done 5 rows. My mother told me casting on is the hardest part and it took me about 5 or 6 attempts to actually realize what I was doing wrong. My sweater is simple to do. I'm starting off ribbing and so my stitching is knit 3 and purl 2 and the following row is reversed. I'm better then when I first started out. I still get the 2 stitches mixed up. Also the sweater requires that I use 2 strings instead of the usual single string.

When my mother knits in the living room, our cat Sally will pounce on the shadow of the yarn and needle. Sally was also doing this while I was knitting and she was pouncing on the shadow of my needle.