How far down the road to learning your craft do you believe yourself to be? Are you comfortable with what you know or are you always striving to learn new skills and add to your knowledge base? Take a look at a few knitting or crochet books and have a look at some of the skills mentioned in the patterns. Can you start your amigurumi pieces with a magic circle, have you ever tried double knitting, how's your intarsia? If you are feeling brave, make a list of some of the skills which you have not yet tried but would like to have a go at, and perhaps even set yourself a deadline of when you'd like to have tried them by.
I spend a lot of time designing, so I have to be more strategic with my time when it comes to knitting other people's designs. I tend to choose items that contain some sort of construction that I'm not familiar with. My sweater knitting has been particularly methodical in learning different constructions.
This isn't to say that I wouldn't knit something just because I like it. But I have a bit more fun when I learn something new. It feels like a bigger accomplishment.
