You probably spit on a whetstone and slide your knife around in circles.  Throw that thing away.  Get a Lansky sharpening kit.  You will, with a little practice, be able to hone to a razor sharpness.  Follow the directions.  They are usually sold at gunshows.  Lacking easy access to that their phone # is:  (716) 877-7511.  I recommend the better set which is made of diamond, rather than the arkansas stones.  It is about $60.00 vs. $25.00 for the stones.  You can sharpen a knife (after the first time, when you have to establish the correct angle) in about ten minutes.  Fairly dull to razor sharp in ten minutes--every time.  GREAT invention.  [:D]

I used Arkansas stones and oil for many years, but the Lansky sharpening kit is the best thing to come along since sliced bread. Mine has the Arkansas stones but get the one with diamond hones if you can afford it. If you have serrated knives get the stone for sharpening serrations. That's optional. I have larger diamond block that I use for big knives and kitchen knives that I want to put a quick edge on. There's a sharpening kit out there that looks exactly like the Lansky and it's a few dollars cheaper but I don't remember who makes it. I don't have any experience with it either.

Knife sharpening is an art, and untill someone who knew what they were doing showed me how to use a stone, I was so bad at it that I would end up buying a new knife each time it got dull. Now I use a quality wet stone that was given to me by a Marine in my platoon who made his own knives. He taught me to take the 'factory edge' off of a new knife because it would be much easier to resharpen it the next time around. I don't know if this is recommended by the MFG, but it works very well for me. The technique is basically the same for each blade; I angle my blade against the stone as if I were slicing off a small piece of the stone. I start at the back of the blade and slide it down the stone blade first, ending with a slow arc towards the tip, while keeping the blade angle the same across the stroke. It took me a while to get good at it, I practiced with old or cheap knives to learn how to get the best edge. It is not as much work as it seems, especially if you do not allow your blade to get too dull before resharpening. Never tried Lansky.

Lansky, preferably in diamond.  They now have competitors who now use virtually the identical system, so competition ought to keep the prices down.  For surgical edge, NOT utility edge, use hard arkansas stone as final step.
Lansky kit competitor is made by DMT; see link posted by me below.

[url]www.lansky.com[/url] Enjoy.

Also see [url]www.eze-lap.com[/url]

Update: DMT Co.s "Aligner" kit seems the functional equivalent of Lansky.  
Haven't used the Aligner, but other DMT products I've used work well. [url]www.dmtsharp.com[/url]

I work with knives every day, my main blade is a 16" but most of the other guys use 8" knives. We ALL use wet stones (the gray ones)and sharpening steels (the best ones are made in Solingen, Germany) I am sure the the "systems" are great and put a nice looking edge on a pocket knife but give me 3 or 4 minutes with your dullest knife and a stone and it will be sharp as hell. I will try to explain how I do it the best I can.
1] lay your WET stone at this angle --> /
2] hold your knife FLAT on the stone, then pick up the BACK of the knife about 1/4", this gives you the angle of the edge. Remember that the thinner the knifes edge the sharper it will be. (the lower the back of the knife is to the stone, the sharper the blade will be. It is also more work to finish this way.)
3] hold the knife at this angle --> \ (flat with the back lifted 1/4")  and start with the tip of the blade at the bottom of the stone and finish with the hilt of the knife at the top of the stone.
4] flip it over and repeat
5] sharpen 2 knives like this until there is nothiing left and then you will have the hang of it.  [;)] Good luck.