I’m on row 5 and the knitting is going grand! This is my first time knitting solely from charts, and I’m finding them very easy to read and understand, and I haven’t even had to resort to a chart keeper yet because the rows are numbered halfway through so you know where you are. The yarn colors are simply gorgeous and I love that I can knit this on straight needles. I’m so excited!

Ok, so I did have a little flub-up in the beginning. I was apparently knitting too fast and I dropped a ssk in row three and didn’t discover it until I had finished row 6. Oops. But I’m starting to get the hang of the pattern now and I have to say it’s very clean and understandable. The big panel is lacework is the only panel that has long repeats - the two smaller panels on either side are short and sweet 8-row repeats and the borders between each section are always the same. Something that helped me out early on in figuring out that my stitch count was off was that in the border sections, whenever you have a yarnover in the row below, you’ll always k2to that yarnover and the stitch right after it. If you suddenly discover that the yarnover is lining up to be knit into a single stitch, you had better tink back because you messed up somewhere.

I did start using stitch markers after the seventh or eighth row to mark the three panel sections. That has visually made it much easier for me to see what I am doing and caught me from making several minor errors. Considering this is my first full-on lace shawl (lace, lace and more lace, no stockinette blocks as far as the eye can see) I’m really pleased and kinda impressed that it’s going so well.

I reached row 56 in October and discovered, to my horror, that I didn’t know where to go after that! The pattern didn’t simply repeat itself from the beginning, and after talking about it with some friends on Ravelry, I realized that according to the border, I’d need to be on row 25, but according to the center chart, I’d need to be on row 23. Which essentially meant I would have had to watch two different places in the chart to get through a row. Eeekk!!! I had a minor freakout and went to bed dreaming of the horrors of knitting hell.

The next morning, I woke up to discover that the designer had read my posts and had fixed my problem for me by charting ALL 408 rows of the chart!!! falls over in shock I’m so happy I could cry with joy. So onward with the knitting I go!

“They’re wakin’ up Maria ‘cause everybody else has got some place to go
She makes a little motion with her head,
Rolls over,
And she says she’s gonna sleep for a couple minutes more
I’ve said “I’m sorry” to Maria for the cold hearted thing that i have done
I’ve said “I’m sorry”, by now, at least once to just about everyone
She says, “I’ve forgotten what I’m supposed to do today,”
And it slips my mind what I’m supposed to say?
We’re getting older and older, and older
And always a little further out of the way
You look into her eyes and it’s more than your heart will allow
In August and Everything After, you get a little less than you expected, somehow…“