100 Stitches - knotted buttonhole stitch

This stitch is the next stitch from my 100 Stitches project:I actually should have titled this blog post "the most frustrating stitch to learn so far!" I have realized that this stitch features many of the things I find hard to do - keeping my spacing even, maintaining accurate tension of my floss, and forming consistent sized knots. You can see what I mean with one of my first attempts:But what makes this stitch so frustrating for me is that I don't really "get" the way you form the stitch. I read and re-read the instructions from 100 Stitches, but at every step I found myself stopping to arrange and re-arrange my floss. I had to keep looking back at the pictures to see if my needle was in the correct position, if it should be over or under the floss...ugh! I will try to explain how I think you are supposed to do this stitch in the following pictures and hopefully it will make sense! First draw some guidelines. On my first attempt, my guidelines were 1/2" apart. This proved to be too wide and only magnified my loose, uneven stitching. I would suggest 1/4". To start, come up through the fabric on the left edge of the bottom guideline:Form a loop from right to left. (100 stitches suggests that you do this over your left thumb) Bring your needle up into the loop: Slip the loop onto the needle - however not this tightly - this is just to show that the loop is supposed to be on the needle:And now bring the needle to the top guide line and into the fabric. This is where it all falls apart for me, I really had a difficult time bringing the needle into position and figuring out how the floss is supposed to be aligned. I finally resorted to "fixing" it every time in this position to look like the picture in 100 stitches : Now set up the stitch with the needle coming up through the fabric on the bottom guideline. The needle tip emerges above and over the floss: Pull the working floss to the right to tighten the knot. Do this BEFORE you pull the needle all the way through! This is a bit like making a french knot :
and complete your stitch: Now set-up for your second stitch in the same way that you did the first stitch. Make a loop from right to left:Now somehow ;) end up in this position: tighten the loop with the working floss and take your stitch:A whole line of these: will become this!This stitch is beautiful but I am going to need more practice and maybe even some different instructions to perfect this stitch!