Creativity strikes at odd moments

So I'm sitting here with a ball of yarn the size of a large grapefruit, and it's in a nice ball, too. I wound this one myself, and it's a lot nicer than usual (and center-pull, at least for now...)

Guess how I made it?

I took a large knitting needle, two pieces of cardboard, and made a turkish-spindle-like apparatus. And then I wound. All I had to do was move my right arm up and down while spinning the whole thing by the needle. I felt like a human ball-winder, but it worked. Heh.

I'm planning on making another Odessa, this time for my mom, out of this yarn.

~~~~~

I was thinking about what it means to be a better knitter, and I know it's easy to say "you're a good knitter when the finished product is beautiful and takes little time."

But I feel that's wrong, ja? Being able to knit even stitches, keep a consistent tension, choose colors that go together well, all these are tangible effects of experience. Yet there are some other things I feel we think about and then banish to corners of our minds.

When you can read a pattern and say "that looks interesting, let me knit that" rather than "that looks interesting, it's probably really hard."

When you modify patterns because you know this technique doesn't suit you. Not that it's something you're uncomfortable with--by all means do things that scare you a bit--but rather that you've tried it before and you don't think it works with the rest of the project.

When you start to fix things more efficiently. I for one feel like this comes not from "1337 knitta skillz" or anything but from a simple desire to spend less time undoing your valuable knitting. To cut corners and minimize the damage. And yet people think being able to fix something by dropping stitches rather than by frogging is more advanced.
It's just lazier, but when you get to that level, you can afford to be lazy, because it won't hurt you. Too much.

That's about all. I'm by no means an expert knitter, but I'd like to think I've got some experience under my belt.