Sac gone wrong?

Hey guys... I'm a 1400-1500 rated player in blitz and I love attacking and sacrificing pieces, even randomly. In this game however I sacrificed my knight for an attempt to mate the castled king on the 'h' file. But the attack ended in a horrible disaster.. any ideas on how I could've checkmated?

16. Rxh4 seems better and it looks like black will have to give up his queen for the rook.

11. Qh5

Surely Rxh4 will still be stronger? But the knight wont have an escape square on c2 if Nxa1.

16... g5 doesn't help at all? Was wary of giving away a tempo, but I guess it doesn't matter?

@Scottrf and @FirebrandX,

yeah.. that was my blunder, I should've played Rxh4. But I didn't play Kd1 for two reasons, I was distracted and I didn't want to lose momentum on the attack on the castled king by attacking the knight. That knight was useless anyways in that area anyways.

@Fulliautomatix

11.Bd2 was the sac to clear the 'h' file.

Ah yeah, pretty nice, exploiting the pinned pawn, cheers.

Ooh... didn't see that either.. :)

Btw.. what's a zwischenzug?

German, I believe? Like the word zugzwang probably...

yes, i know, but there were more active choices.

here's another one..

What on earth am I doing wrong and what can I do to correct my technique? (As in for all such games and not this one)

At one moment I'm ahead in the game and the next I end up in with a losing endgame...

Two pieces for a rook and pawn is bad in that position (move 8).

As for what happened, you set up a discovery on your own queen.

Yes, "zwischen" means "in between", "Zug" means "move" and in German it's allowed to connect words to create new nouns.

Ouch... Lots of constructive criticism on the game...

But OVERALL any tips?

Pawns can't move backwards... Got it!

But in all seriousness, thanks for the help :)

all you have to do is paint a face on them and turn them towards yourself, they'll go backwards then ok.