Feeling pretty good.

No problem.  I finished Elysium with time to spare.  I really didn't think I would get there in one day, but, in the end, no problem.  

It had a good soak last night and is busy lying flat drying right now.  It looks like nothing lying flat.  Just a big unshapely black thing.  But when you put it on, it looks really great.  So no pictures yet.  I'll get pictures after it is good and dry and after the buttons go on tomorrow. Might even be a picture of me wearing it.  

One of my goals for this year was to knit a pattern.  I have a bit of fear about knitting patterns. I usually get stuck in the train wreck of numbers and words, and all thought shuts down.   But I have come to understand knitting enough, and come to understand fit for my own body enough that I don't worry about it in the same way.

I still worry though.  If I wasn't sure just how and where the best place for fit adjustments were on a particular design,  I would knit one out of an ordinary yarn first.  Then, once I understood the particular shaping of it, I would knit my goal.

Elysium is a great sweater if you are a curvaceous sort.  Knit sideways as it is, in simple garter stitch, it is a thing of ease to add a little shaping with short rows below the waist.  Short rows for waist shaping were my only adjustments, at 35 stitches and 40 stitches.  I made 2 sets of short rows on each side front, three sets of short rows under the arms, and 4 sets across the back.   These were exactly right to fit me perfectly.  

In another pattern, say something that was colour work, adding shaping like this would not work out at all.  There is still going to be a lot of work before I am really comfortable with patterns that are a huge departure from what I have already done.   

And yet, without departing from where I have already been, growth as a knitter would be impossible.  In my short time as a knitter, I already have comfort zones.  Simple socks are it.  Knitting without patterns are it.  Knitting with patterns?  Not so much.

That will be part of my continuing goal.  To do things that are different than what I have done before, to look for designs that will challenge me as I work to make them fit. I will do a bit of sitting in my comfort zones too.  Comfort zones are the down time of my knitting.  Everybody needs a little down time.  

The coming year will be a continuing adventure, a search for balance, for growth, for challenge, for rest.  I love this point of a year.  I love feeling good about where I have been, and even better about where I am going to go.