A more sophisticated stitch marker

I am making slow, but steady progress on my Birthday shawl. In the last post I showed my "brilliant" discovery of a technique to slow me down.

Because my pattern repeats every nine stitches I was marking my starting spot with a scrap of yarn. This worked well, however it wasn't.....very sturdy.

So, I am now using strips of silk ribbon to mark my pattern as I go. It is much prettier and easier to see. Here I have placed the ribbon just before the first stitch of my nine stitch pattern.

 Here is where I stopped knitting my nine stitch pattern. Now I count the stitches to be sure I have created nine new stitches. Yes! This set has nine stitches.

Now I do it all again, all the way across the row:)