Still love those cables, baby

I am making progress on the second Viking Bag.
I love the pattern even more now. Karen is pure genius. I think I am moving along faster this time around because I am 'reading' it as I go. It's somehow making intuitive sense and I've barely needed to look to the actual pattern to know what to do next. It's in the genius of the design - the cables actually follow a logical, knowable pattern. Fan out, come together; over, then under. It makes sense.

This feels different than when I understood the logic of the Irish Moss stitch on the Must Have (lost my mind) Cardigan (oy, remember that massive case of the dumb?). That was a matter of seeing that there was a pattern to the pattern. This feels like something more. I'm beginning to think that maybe (just maybe) I am starting to grow as a knitter - maybe even from being a 'knitter' to being a real, live Knitter. Knitting itself is starting to make sense. I've noticed I am beginning to be able to read my stitches on the needle - to see their slants and whether they are lying (laying?) correctly for what they are to become. There are steps and two basic stitches and I've known those for years, but this is something else. This is feeling the knitting, understanding it in some holistic sense so that it's not just a matter of painstakingly reading each small part of the pattern and working it, but understanding it as whole, how it's meant to come together and then working off that understanding. Nifty.

Of course, now I am sure to do something tragically wrong and debunk this. Must go and pay homage of some sort to the knitting faeries lest they decide to show me what's what!