I did it!

I have done the first part and 2 pattern repeats of the Shetland Triangle shawl! I went out to the Stitch 'n Bitch at Tangled Skeins last night, and Cheryl was kind enough to help me through the cast on and help me figure out the charts (turns out I was reading it right after all, I'm still not sure why my stitch count was wrong, but that doesn't matter now). I actually had to make myself put it away and go to bed around 1:30 am, I'm sure I would have been up all night with it (all you lace knitters who said it was addictive...you were right!). It has a few "design features" and I'm sure years from now I'll chuckle over my first attempt at lace knitting...but for now it's probably the most beautiful thing I have ever taken on.
My progress so far:

I am so eager to get back to this project and I even dreamt last night that I was blocking it (yeah...I do knitting projects in my dreams. Don't pretend you don't). I cannot wait to see how it looks when it's all finished.
The other night at KOL I was talking about my 3rd or 4th project ever...Grace's Baptism Gown. The pattern was in a book the Ninja lent to me (I think it may have been a Debbie Bliss, but I cannot be sure). It was very ambitious, and my first time revamping a pattern to fit my needs. To begin, the pattern only went up 3 mos old, Grace was almost 9 mos at the time of her baptism. Also, the pattern called for angora, which I'm sure would have made a lovely heirloom, but totally out of my wallet's reach. So I made in a satiny yarn (a very nice acrylic actually), in a worsted weight. I realized that the bodice of the dress was half the stitches of the skirt, in ribbing. So I swatched, measured, measured my daughter and came up with my numbers. I ended up casting on over 200 stitches for the skirt. I had finished the pattern on the hem (4 inches of skirt) when I realized it was twisted. So I ripped back and started over. I had just shy of a month to complete the dress. I learned a lot about shaping with this project, made my very first neckline, my first button holes, my first time picking up stitches along the edge (to make the sleeves. Sleeve one was completed through the night...and had to be ripped the next day because my daughter, tiny though she was, did not have arms that were less than half an inch in diameter. I finished the gown with 2 days to spare. For Christmas I made belt loops and tied a wide red ribbon around her waist and trotted her off to Church then to my Nanny's house for our annual party (she threw up on herself before anyone else arrived...but because of the material I used, the dress was machine washable!). The dress is hanging in her closet, and I plan to pack it away carefully into a box and hope that someday Grace will be dressing her own little girl in her baptism gown. I'm still very very proud of her Baptism gown. And I still can't believe that I only knit it a year ago.

My skills as a knitter have greatly improved since then, and I know so much more about my artform of choice. But this is probably one of my proudest knitting triumphs.