As promised: dropping stitches and laddering down on Clapotis.

I actually found the little bit of mohair "halo" (it's like a secondary thread, along with the ribbon) on this gets a little "grabby" and in a few places tangles - so I just have to break the tangle of mohair fibers (it won't make the thing unravel or anything; like I said, it's kind of a secondary bit and it's really just the "guard hairs" that are tangling).

I did move to using a row-counter with this section; you have to remember rows 6 and 8: on Row 6, you place a marker at the end of the row (the thing is adding stitches at the end of the knit rows, but as it grows at the end of the row, it shrinks at the beginning of the row). And on Row 8 you do the drop

Here it is just prior to the first row 8:



Then you purl the first stitch, take out the marker there at the beginning, drop the next stitch off and let it unravel. It doesn't do any damage as it's just one stitch, and it's also flanked by twisted stitches that help give more tensile stability (or so I think) to the whole thing.



You just have to work it a bit to get it to unravel down. (It's like a ladder in a stocking, except this is a ladder you actually want).

You don't actually have to ladder the thing all the way before moving on (you just need it to drop down a few rows so you can knit past it without catching the stitch) but I went ahead and did it all the way.



The next step here is to pick up that top "bar," knit into the back of it (and knit into the back of the next stitch) to sort of "seal off" the edge, and then you move on in pattern.

I kept going. I have two full ladders done now:



According to the pattern, you do 13, 12-row repeats (there are a couple of "plain" rows in the repeat after you ladder) for the width, but I will likely make it one or two repeats wider - the original was sort of a big-scarf size and I really prefer a true shawl size. Also, I have more yarn than what the pattern originally called for.