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Mystery Stole 2 ~ a bit of a tutorial

I thought I would put up what I am doing on the Mystery Stole 2 to show others how I have managed to have no mistakes with this lacework.

Firstly I colored in the chart. 5 stitches red, 5 stitches I left white.

I am using a 3m sticky notecard to mark the line I am on & keep notes if I need to. I have the right side chart in one side of my page protector and the left side chart is in the other side of the page protector, back to back basically. All I have to do is flip it over to go from right to left side. I move the notecard from one side to the other also.

At the top of the work you can see that I have markers. I decided to  place them every 10 stitches excluding the middle section with the center stitch. I have the markers spaced out like this:

10 sts, marker, 10 sts, marker, 10 sts, marker, 10 sts, marker, 9 sts, marker, center stitch, marker, 9 sts, marker, 10 sts, marker, 10 sts, marker, 10 sts, marker, 10 sts

I wanted to keep the center stitch alone to match how the charts have the center stitch designated. Knowing myself I would have repeated that center stitch going from the right side to the left side chart and ended up with many mistakes around that center stitch.

Also, as in most lace knitting you will have to move the markers every once in a while to get that k2tog or ssk to work out. Just make sure that you end up with the correct stitch count between markers real quick. I do have a habit of counting between markers on the wrong side row. It’s a simple safety measure.

Here you can see that I have the side I am not working on a circular needle held with a needle holder so that there is no chance of losing that side that is not being worked.

Here you can see my whole little setup. So far it’s worked miraculously. This is how I normally proceed with lace projects or any charted work actually.

I do hope that this will help anyone that has trouble with charts or lace patterns. These tips are a lifesaver. You can see that I have no lifelines. I don’t believe they do all that much to help. I am a preemptive strike person. Someday I may change my mind about them but as of now I have never found them to be a need in my knitting.

So Mystery Stole knitters, Happy knitting!