I bought the most beautiful hand-dyed alpaca/silk yarn at Stitches Midwest for the Clapotis shawl. I was determined to knit this. Other knitters reported how simple it was, so I was sure I could do it. So I was stumped when I ran into trouble coming up one stitch short on row ten of every repeat. What could I be doing wrong? I searched Ravelry and the internet to see if others had had the same problem and came up with nothing. Then, last Thursday night while knitting in the quiet after kidlets went to bed, it suddenly hit me like a ton of bricks. The pattern says for row 8: “knit this st and the following stitch through the back loop”. Sounds simple enough, right? I was knitting them together instead of one at a time through the back loop. All of a sudden it made perfect sense, and that is why row 10 always had one less stitch on row 10. Wow! What a revelation! It truly felt as if a thousand watt light bulb suddenly switched on above my head. Surely I am not the only one who’s made this mistake, but thankfully I figured it out. Unfortunately, I am already halfway through the project and it’s too late to correct it. I think I will continue to knit it as I was so that it won’t change the look of the edging. But I do love this pattern from Knitty and am planning to do another in a bit heavier weight yarn.
