Musings on being a real knitter

So I just heard on the news that people who do at least 20 minutes of housework a week are happier than those who don't. Which leads me to the question: is it possible to exist without doing 20 minutes of housework a week? I mean, obviously some people are physically incapacitated and can't do any housework at all, but other than that? That's less than three and a half minutes a day. Even if you hire someone to do your actual cleaning, or even if you just live in a dirty home, wouldn't you spend twenty minutes a week just doing the dishes? Even if you had a dishwasher, I imagine that loading and unloading it would take more than 20 minutes a week. And what about preparing meals? It's got to take more than three and a half minutes to take things out of take-out containers and put them on plates. Taking out the garbage?

Newsflash: people who get out of bed every day are happier than those who don't. Update at 10.

But that's not what I'm writing about. I am writing, again, about my second sweater. I casted on my green tea raglan, and I'm off and running. As I said earlier, this is my second attempt to do this sweater. I first tried it a little over a year ago and gave up after one sleeve and half of the back. And doing it a second time has made me realize how far I have progressed as a knitter. The pattern actually isn't very specific: for instance, it says "decrease one stitch on both sides every tenth row," but it doesn't specifically tell you how to do that. The last time I attempted the sweater, the only decrease I knew was knit two together, so I didn't realize that I should do SSK on one side to mirror the K2T decrease. I just K2T on both sides. I didn't know I should do the decreases one stitch in from the edge, to leave a nice selvage. I don't think I knew what selvage was. At that point, the only cast-on I could do was long tail. Now, I can do long-tail, cable, knit on, backwards loop, tubular, provisional, and figure 8.

I'm not much of a knitter. Perusing Ravelry, it's clear that there are a lot of people who are vastly more technically proficient and more creative than I am. But I realize that I do feel like a real knitter. I don't know when this happened! Is it something that magically occurs around about the time when you finish your first sweater?

Now I want to know how long it will be before I stop being intimidated by LYSs.