My very first sweater!

I started Liesl, by Ysolda, a couple days ago as it looked like a nice, easy sweater and was small enough for me to use my bemiji homespun on. I sillily only bought 2 skeins. I have officially fallen in love with top down sweaters! I could try it on as I go, which is really helping me with my sizing worries. I even swatched for the first time in my life. I think I did it right...

I also love Ysolda's stuff because they go up to real sizes! I am not huge, but most of the actual cute stuff has patterns that go to size small. Ugh. I am not even the biggest size in Ysolda's patterns. Yay! I think I am going to make Vivian next (I love how her patterns have names, like Ikea furniture!), it is a very cute hoodie and I am ready for the challenge now. I just have to finish getting liesl to length. I think I'll have to bribe one of my knitting friends with a sewing machine to put the zipper in though. Apparently, that isn't the sort of thing that can be done by hand. Oh well.

Cursed Shawl

Take that, shawl!  I finally finished my Nightsong shawl today.  I swear that thing is cursed!  I decided to put a lifeline in before I started my last repeat as I was freaking out that I might be short on yarn (turned out to be sillily untrue).  I am so glad I did as when I was about to put in a lifeline before I started the trim, my needle snapped!  Right in the middle of the project.  After almost having a minor breakdown, I ripped back to the lifeline, thanking Mary for making me worry about my yarn.  I ended up only losing about 15 rows, but when each row takes me almost a half hour, that is a significant amount of time.

I finally got back into it and had only 2 rows left of the trim.  I got up to put my PJs on before I

 finished up, only to come back and find that a certain fuzzy dog had investigated my knitting and snapped my brand new KnitPicks circular!  I didn't lose any work this time but I was super pissed.  As I said, this shawl is cursed.  I had another pair of 3.25mm needles (which I had gotten after the first one broke, only to find that my KnitPicks one had arrived that day) so I was able to finish yesterday.  I cast off today as quickly as possible trying to save my last set of 3.25mm needles. 

So yay!  Three sets of needles later, it is finally done and blocking on my flatmate's bed (she is out of town).  It is so pretty that all the trauma was worth it.  I can't wait until it is dry and I can wear it to my knitting group on Thursday!