Absolutely confused...

So I was skilling up because I was determined to get past 58 today and become a Craftsman. I turned in my 2 Wool Bracers for 6400 Guild Points (woohoo!) and started synthing Hunter's Cotton. I wish I had known about this synth sooner, it costs about 2000g less per synth if I buy all the ingredients off the auction house, probably 1/3rd that price if I synthed the ingredients myself. Either way, it took me past 58 and I ended up finishing at 59.4, which I'm quite happy about. I have 34,998/70,000 guild points (half-way to magnifying spectacles) and also started collecting items for my 1st pair of Jaridah Salvars. It consists of 2x Karakul Cloth, 1x Marid Hair, 1x Karakul Leather, 1x Steel Sheet. They sell for 650k but the ingredients cost more than the value of the item so I decided to farm everything. So far I have 1 cloth and almost have enough skins to make a 2nd cloth. I farmed the Marid Hair last night after an hour of soloing (250k on auction house NO THANKS!) and I made the steel sheet myself.

Anyways, as to why I was confused. I was told that synthing is helped if you are facing a certain direction, on a certain day, with a certain elemental staff equipped. I usually almost always do this. This time however I forgot to and was just in a rush. I synthed on darksday (supposed to be bad) facing south (was using earth crystal which means I "should" face SouthEast) and had my Thunder Staff equipped (theory says best luck comes with Earth/Terra's Staff equipped when using earth crystals). To top it off I had no guild support and was in my mog house which has "a faint glow of water eneregy". The item's cap is 63, I was 58.7 and here is what happened: I got +0.7 skillups in 5 consecutive synths. After the first 2 I said, "screw this don't change what's working for you" and continued synthing facing the wrong way on the wrong day with the wrong equips. It was Darksday 3:14 and was First Quarter Moon (45%). Now I'm totally confused... Either way I hit 59.4 and hopefully can get to 63 by spamming this synth over the next few days.

Update -
Spent 5 hours in a party organizing KS99. Took the RDM/DRK almost 3 hours to get online, then while waiting in Balgas Dais for 2 hours the second I trade orb 1 PLD starts to DC. Our other PLD said he was way late for something and logged... We were gonna try it with 1 PLD and a crapload of healers, and as I approach the circle... he DC's again. We called it eventually, a little over 5 hours after the party was started. I'm 2 levels from 37DRK too, glad I left my party for that.

...I'm gonna go buy a lottery ticket.