New on my needles

I've finally started the Jeanie shawl! It's a bit scary, I have to admit... But so far it's working out ok - as far as I can tell. The really scary thing is that although I'll be dropping some stitches along the way, there are many columns of stitches that won't be dropped until the shawl has been knitted to its full length! So as I knit, I don't see what it's going to look like when finished. And even scarier, what if I make a mistake along the way and the whole thing unravels completely wrong? Or stops unravelling half-way through? Ooh... so many possibilities for disaster. It makes me even more determined. ;) I will make this work!
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You can just see the blue thread on the right side in the picture (and in between the first row of stitches) - that's the waste yarn from my provisional cast on. It will later be removed to expose the live stitches so the cabled band that runs along the side of the shawl can be continued along the edge.
The stitch markers are a great help. The blue ones mark the change between each of the three charts, the white ones various points within each chart. I just wish the recipe was more specific about the placement of the in-chart markers... By my calculations I'll need 19 markers in addition to the chart markers, not 19 in total. I wonder where my mistake is?