Here's the most recent mega-thread on the topic:
http://www.fasagames.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=273
@Jaracove
It seems to me you asked very similar in the last thread. I'm not mentioning that to berate you, it just suggests to me there's something that's still not click for you. I'm just not entirely sure which chord to strike to maybe hit the right resonance for you.
Ignore all the stuff about True Patterns and Pattern Items - in reality, that's all mechanical fluff. A Key Knowledge has two parts: a Test Knowledge and a Research Knowledge. The Test Knowledge can be one or more questions you must answer and/or one or more deeds you must perform. The Research Knowledge is the answer to all the questions in the Test Knowledge. Once you have successfully performed ALL deeds AND answered all questions listed, you have resolved the Key Knowledge and may pay LP to gain the rank's effect.
How you go about answering ("obtaining the Research Knowledge") the questions ("information required for the Test Knowledge") is entirely up to you and the GM.
Let's assume you ambush a group of bandits, killing one of them and imprisoning the others. You loot the body of the dead bandit and find a Thread Item. It is going to take you a week to escort the living bandits back to town to face judgement, so during the trip, you perform Item History on the sword. While this is totally unrealistic, let's assume the Rank 1 has a Kew Knowledge with a Test Knowledge of "Discover the name of the wife for the last owner of this item." Here are some of the MANY ways you could obtain the Research Knowledge:
1) When you rolled the corpse, it had a letter inside, which begins with "To my dearest wife, Elsa...". BAM, that's it, you're done.
2) You question (in any variety of ways) the living bandits. They tell you he was married to someone named Elsa. BAM, that's it, you're done.
3) The living bandits don't know, but they know the town he called home. It happens to be on your way. You swing through, ask around, and meet Else. BAM, that's it, you're done.
4) After a time, you make it back to Throal, and either you or a paid Acolyte performs a Research test to try to find the wife's name. If successful, BAM, that's it, you're done.
The last point - the most inefficient and least fun, IMHO, but sometimes necessary - is where the whole "True Pattern" stuff comes in. The item, as a Thread Item, has a True Pattern. The last owner, as a Namegiver, has a True Pattern. When you look up information, in any way (Research test, asking around, following clues, etc), using one of these pieces of information, you are mechanically "investigating the True Pattern." It's just a very flavorful, and complicated, way of saying it.
Make sense?