Beaten into submission

That's Rosy Fingered Dawn - not me. She has settled down and I have just completed chart 5 and two rounds of the "Spacer ridge" with no mishaps whatsoever. I expect that has put the mouth on it and she'll be busy unravelling herself just because my back is turned.

This was the problem:



I think you can just see the red beginning of round marker on the right there. You can also see the broken threads just about four stitches before the end of the round. The language was choice, I can tell you. All better now though:




There we are all mended. This picture also illustrates something I have been puzzling over for a while. Here we are knitting "Mountains in the rain" - you can clearly see the mountains. On the right the slope of the mountain is created by YO, SSK on the left by K2TOG, YO. Paired decreases, sloping in opposite directions. However, the hole created by the YO on the right is bigger (quite a bit bigger, actually) than the hole created by the YO on the left. I do not know why this should be and it is bugging me. Is it something to do with the distance the yarn travels before the next stitch? I think it must be but I can't, for the life of me, work out how to stop it. I have tried wrapping the yarn round the needle in all the ways I can think of and nothing has helped. If anyone out there has either a) noticed this phenomenon or b) worked out a solution, I would be grateful for any clue.

You know how I usually panic that the shawl in question will end up too small? I do not think that is going to be a problem with RFD:



This, of course, is only half of her (well, from one corner to the centre) and this is me stretching her gently - not putting her on the rack, which is how I normally block lace. I know she looks as if she takes up half the width of my house but that is merely an illusion. Isn't it?