There were two pattern repeats. A small leaf pattern and a larger pattern I will call a fan.
When I started the cowl, I was reading the fan pattern as a 10 row repeat and the leaf a 15 row repeat.
Mathematically, the patterns would match up every 30 rows, or every two leaves.
So I've been knitting happily along and then I'd find a leaf not matching up,so I would adjust the leaf to get back on track.
This was giving me large and small leaves; I wasn't digging that. Further, I hadn't been doing the three stitch decrease correctly and had twisted veins on the leaves.
Then it hit me. The fan had a 10 row repeat, and the leaf a 16 row repeat (counting all WS and RS rows), which has patterns meeting up every 80 rows.
So, last night, the cowl looked like this:
I reworked the pattern on graph paper, subtracted a row, a couple stitches, changed the order of the patterns and we are back in business.
Had over 20 inches before I frogged it, and am sitting with 3 inches now.
I would not have been happy with the cowl, even if it is going to someone who wouldn't see the errors I had made.