yarn over and over and over

I have been steadily working away at the free  Warmth Stole shawl pattern from Universal Yarns over the summer. 

Although Verdi is not currently active in the Drops line up, we still have many beautiful colours in stock. FYI it has 1225 meters or 1139 yards, enough to make 2 generously sized projects.

The stitch pattern itself is an organic type, it reminds me of branching leaves. I confess however, in all my years of knitting, this is the first time I have worked a pattern with yarnovers on both sides, knit and purl, every row. Plus the usual yarnover, preceded or followed by a decrease is not the way this pattern flows. Good exercise for the little grey cells!

Both Verdi and Revolutions are beautiful soft, mohair type yarns, so the pattern repeat (pre-blocking) nested within the softness, takes a bit of determined gazing to discern. I also added lovely bright green Clover stitch markers between the 10 stitch repeats. There was a small error in my downloaded copy of the pattern on Row 4. The last k2 of the repeat part of the text should be eliminated. I did let the knit guild and company know and hope it has been fixed.

Keeping track of the pattern rows has been challenging, mixed with summer time. I vowed to knit one full repeat per (week)day in order to complete the project. It helped the required discipline to listen to a thrilling podcast series called "You Must Remember This" about old (my) Hollywood history.

However, as the poet Burns says "the best laid schemes o' mice and men gang aft agley", so as life happens, I get called away during the repeat, somehow the magnetic line keeper shifts, and it takes time to get back on track.

The fluffiness of the yarn, mixed with the yarnovers, needs increased focus.

I am so pleased that I have finally found a better and simple way to figure it out.

Start a row, then work the first repeat after the border, then, a distinctive part of on of the next repeats, for example in row 9

Row 9: K2, *k3, yo, k4, ssk, k1; rep from * to last 2 sts, k2.

In this case I stopped at the second repeat after the *k3, yo, k4, and since every row of this pattern is unique, I can more easily tell where to pick up after I left off.

For your info, maybe you have already guessed, we are fans of Clover tools and accessories and keep them in stock.