First Real Lace

There are a lot of firsts in my latest project.  First time using lace weight yarn, first nupps ( that is a story within itself), first twisted loop backward cast on, first short rows, and first purl 2 tog bind off.  The pattern is Annis from Knitty and the yarn is Miss Babs Yet.  There is a sad story on Miss Babs blog about her unfortunate smoke incident but happily, she is dying fiber again.  Don't you just love the name of her company?   I will be ordering from her again.  Back to the nupps - which I considered leaving out but I am always up for a good challenge and a challenge they were.  These are basically 7 stitches in 1 stitch and the tricky part is purling 7 together on the back row..  Luckily I found a video on Utube that uses a crochet hook otherwise I would have given up.  Even with the crochet hook, those rows took me a long time.   Not to mention the initial cast on of a whopping 363 stitches.  It was worth the effort and I will probably make another one which should go faster the second time around.  I love to watch the stitches open up with wet blocking but get impatient waiting for the project to dry.  The left part of the bottom photo is the curling mess that it looks like before blocking.  I am ready for Fall and a break from this 99 degree heat!