Peacock Feathers Shawl - Cast On

A month ago Ellen of Earthfaire approached me to do a pattern test knit of the Peacock Feather Shawl by Aksenik Lyudmila.  She had come up with two potential yarn combinations and offered me  choice.  I went with the teal.  The pattern is a little bit of a challenge, being translated from Russian and there are typos and errors.  It took me three tries before I liked how things were starting out.  The pattern has you work backwards yarn overs, which I interpreted as meaning wrap the yarn in the opposite direction you normally would.  This results in the orientation of the yarn over being reversed - leading leg on the back side of the needle - and I am guessing that is done to force you to twist the yarn over when you knit it to close up the hole.  I tried working it with backwards yarn overs and just didn't like doing them.  Next I tried just working regular yarn overs and not twisting them, but that left holes along the edge that didn't seem right - the edge just wasn't substantial enough.  Finally I decided to work regular yarn overs and the knit them through the back loop on the next row.  That seems to be working for me, the edge is not too tight, and it looks good.

The next challenge came right at the beginning of the work.  The instructions have 5 rows, but then state to repeat rows 5 and 6 until you have done 96 rows total.  I did a Google translate of the Russian instructions and they stated to repeat the last two rows - so rows 4 and 5.

Pattern:  Peacock Feather Shawl by Aksenik Lyudmila
Yarn:  Schoppel-Wolle Zauberball Starke 6 and Hikoo Trenzado
Needle:  US 2.5 (3 mm)