The picture on the left is a shawl I'm knitting right now. I maybe get in a couple of rows a day because I'm busy writing or reading or too tired, but I keep plugging away.
Again, this shawl has a lot of different stitches and it's a completely different construction than anything I've knitted before this.
Today, one of my favorite designers released a new shawl pattern that was so cute! I wanted to buy it, but then I looked at it and I'm like: Lace. Picot bind off. No. I don't wanna.
If you're not a knitter, lace knitting is beautiful and airy, but it's also extremely easy to make a mistake and I've used life lines (yarn threaded through a row so I don't have to rip back to the beginning) to make it through some of the patterns. I decided I'm done with patterns with a lot of lace. It's too stressful. Picot? Not my favorite either. It's a futzy bind off, IMO.
I feel confident enough in my knowledge of knitting that I no longer feel a great need to find projects with new elements. I never thought I'd reach this point. Until recently, I would have called myself an adventurous beginner, but now I think I'd call myself an adventurous intermediate knitter. Do I dare say close to being an experienced knitter?
There's still a lot I need to learn. I've never actually finished a sweater and I'd like to make some of those. I also need to learn how to brioche because I have yarn for the cutest sweater, but the yoke has patches of brioche and I don't know how to do it yet.
But I know how to do lace and picot. I know how to do mosaic knitting and I love knitting cables. OMG, I need more cabled projects! Maybe I should look for a cabled sweater pattern. :-)
My point of this post, though, was that at some point when I wasn't paying attention, I realized I was a pretty practiced knitter and that I felt confident enough to tackle things that scared me before. I also realized that I no longer need to pick patterns with lots of different sections of learning involved because I'm confident I can pick up whatever I need to do in any pattern. Or almost anything at least. It's kind of exciting to reach this point.
