Timmy's Hat, a Sock for Me, & Stranded Knitting Woes

I've been working on a hat for Timmy.  He loves yellow and green.  I made him a yellow and green Star of Bethlehem quilt about 3 years ago.  Then he got a navy blue jersey Y blanket so he puts that one on top of my quilt.  Kind of frustrating.  Anyway.

Here's the hat.  It uses the stranded knitting technique I used on Sydni's and Brynn's hats, and I'm just not any good at it.  The hats all turned out really puckered, and that's not the way it's supposed to be.

So I gave up for a while and went to stranded knitting school.  The technique I want to learn is knitting with one color of yarn in my right hand and another color in my left hand.

First, I worked on a sock for myself.  My justification for starting a new project is to practice knitting with my right hand (I usually knit with my left hand).  With this sock, the yarn is dyed in a pattern so I don't have to use more than one ball of yarn for the sock.  And there isn't any kind of pattern to it.  It's just knit, knit, knit.  I keep forgetting I'm using my right hand, and knitting with my left, but the yarn looks right.  It doesn't pucker or even look different when I use my right hand and when I use my left hand.

I need to keep working on the sock, but I got a bit bored and started the second step in stranded knitting school:  knitting with both hands alternately.  The colors just don't mesh right.

I think I'll give up on stranded knitting for the moment and go back to knitting the sock for a while.  I've never knit a sock before so I'm learning all sorts of fun things about sock knitting.