Public Service

I know you are all thinking that this is going to be a Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival entry but it's not. That's gotten bumped to tomorrow's list of things to do, partly due to the fact that I left the stinkin' camera at home like a space cadet. It happens. No, today's post is for the greater knitting good of all humankind.
As you may know, we here at Rosies are hosting a Charlotte's Web Knit-A-Long (KAL). There has been much confusion and ripping and some crying at kitchen tables over the, um, lax instructions. So here is my attempt to clarify what is supposed to happen for all of you Charlotte's Webbers out there.

The chart on the back of the single pattern is incomplete. If you have the book you are in buisness--the entire chart is there so this only applies to those of you agonizing over the chart on the leaflet pattern. The motif repeat is the shaded area on the chart. Think of the beginning of the shaded area as the first * of an instruction that would be worded, "repeat from * to * to the last _ number of stitches." The end of the shaded area is the second of those *'s. The motif repeat is not, in my mind, the same thing as the shawl repeat. This means that there are a certain number of rows that repeat themselves to allow you to add additonal motif repeats to the shawl. The shawl's repeat happens from row 11 to row 25. Essentially, once you have the beginning set up you repeat rows 11-25 on the chart OVER AND OVER again along with the mantra of the motif repeat across each of the corresponding rows. So row 11 is THE SAME THING as row 27. And row 13 is THE SAME THING as row 29 is THE SAME THING as row45, etc. You are just adding two additional mantras of "*knit one, yarn over, ssk, yo, [sl1, k2tog, psso], yo, k2tog, yo*" for every shawl repeat.
Here is my advice to you: Get a pencil and a piece of paper (or sit at a computer) and write it out from row 11 to row 25 using the *'s where the shaded area is on the motif repeat and put each row on an index card (Judy's brilliant idea) labled 1, 2, 3, etc. or a, b, c, etc or however you want and put the pattern away until you get to the end of the shawl. I can't write it out here because it's a copyright infringment but row 11 should look like this:
k2, yo, *k2, yo, ssk, k1, k2tog, yo, k1* repeat from * to * to last stitch, k1, yo, k2.
Good luck.