Finish or frog it February 2

Another one for the "to finish" pile, my Lilac Leaf Shawl, started way back in September when everyone else was tempting me with their beautiful lace projects.  Unfortunately the beginning of September was also when baby NM was making his or her presence known by sapping me of all energy and enthusiasm to achieve anything more than constant napping and drinking orange juice!  Needless to say I got as far as knitting one of the lace borders then starting on the second before shoving the project in my knitting basket. 

Last night whilst MrNM was out playing 5-a-side football I picked it up again to see if I could make a bit more progress.  Being lace knitting and in rather lovely laceweight yarn it does require a lot of attention (it also required the purchase of wooden tips after the pains of knitting the first border section with my usual metal knitpros!) and when MrNM is around we usually sit together chatting, possibly watching a film or TV episode and I have to stick to very simple knitting (like the socks for him, the first is finished and I didn't run out of the carefully weighed out 50g ball of yarn!).  In his absence I could focus.


  

I needed to focus.  After this picture was taken (and promise me it will look better when it's blocked!) I got to the part with nupps.  At this point the blasted thing almost ended up in the "to frog" pile as I knit, tinked and re-knit the same two rows about four times before the nupps looked even vaguely not awful.  I considered not bothering but told myself I had left them out of the last shawl I knit that included them in the pattern, I would knit the blasted things on this one.  Anyway the nupp section is done for now, there are some more to come but I have about 300 nupp free rows to go before I get to that part!

Yes I am aware of the crochet hook method of knitting nupps and how it's supposed to be easier but I'm not a crocheter and could not for the life of me find a crochet hook anywhere last night!  I own a few but they appear to have hidden in protest as I almost never use them and when I do it's for such degrading business as picking up dropped stitches and untangling yarn instead of actual crochet.  It's a hard life being a crochet hook in my possession!