Done Branching

I made this project from a really nice pattern I found on Knitty called Branching Out, by .......It seems like a long time ago that I started, using some handspun baby camel that I was really excited about at the time. I finally cast it off today. Whew!

Lace was a stretch for me. I learned a bunch - how to "read" my knitting better - it forces you to be able to tell by looking where your yarn-overs and knit-two-together-slanting-lefts are and how they are different from a slip-two-knit-one-pass-two-over. It's really hard to back up if you need to un-knit something, and it's painfully slow (for me anyway) because you really have to pay attention.
Nope - no watching the 10:00 news while you're doing this! Actually, if I did it more I might have been able to memorize the pattern and actually just knit, without checking the chart over and over, but for me I needed a quiet, uninterrupted half hour or so to get one repetition of the pattern, and I just don't seem to have very many of those in my life. Uninterrupted half hours, that is....
It probably should have been longer, but when the camel was gone I stopped. With great celebration, actually, truth be told.

There are a bunch of mistakes in it, (don't look too close) but I'm really pleased with the way it ended up. It's soft, it's pretty, and it was a challenge.
Whew! Can't wait to wear it!