As of Saturday I've made it to row 8 and still have all the hair on my head, have ripped and made wonky repairs on many rows, but the good news is I’m learning and understand the pattern now. My goal at this point is to complete at least 1 budding lace repeat without errors : )As the rows get longer (this pattern starts from a 5 stitch row and expands every row thereafter to create large triangle), the prospect of ripping back one or more rows is getting more unattractive, and so I have been trying to make repairs where I can. After the umpteenth repair where I just kind of bumbled along adding/deleting stitches somewhat randomly to make the stitch count match, I've started really looking at the pattern after every right side row, marking where the mistake is with a safety pin, then fixing on the wrong side row (all purl stitches).
I finally hit on the bright idea of photographing what the correct stitch should look like in order to recreate it from the wrong side (WS) row. Above is what a correct yarn over looks like just before purling on the WS row.
this is how the pattern looks after correcting the yarn over and purling through. I cannot express how happy I was to catch the mistake and actually fix it so it looks perfect! I am finding this pattern pretty addictive, it's kind of fun to do the pattern correctly, but even more compelling is if I do find a mistake I feel like I have to complete at least 1 more row in order to fix it before I forget there was a mistake.