The real mystery here is why I continue to believe that I should be knitting lace in the first place.

For a while there I had it going on. That was me on the Forest Path, there was I merrily knitting along on The Forest Path Stole, section after section, tier after tier, seed stitch after seed stitch. I had even contracted a rare case of project fidelity and all was going along just swimmingly until suddenly it wasn't. It would seem that I have come to a fork in the road and I am not sure on how to proceed, so all my lace knitting momentum came to a screeching halt as I, once again, found myself lost in the woods.

So while I pondered my predicament (of which I will share my dilemma in an up coming post)
I do what I always do when I'm uncertain as how to proceed, I look to see what other people are doing, that is; I read other people's blogs to see all the fun that they're having while I'm stuck.

I came along Deb's blog. Now Deb was going on about getting ready to start the mystery stole 3 starting in about a week, and my curiosity got the better of me, so I took a peek at the stole.
Well let's see, a mystery theme, white or black yarn, and beads for extra measure.
Now, I need to start another lace stole like I need another hole in, well, you know.

But, I do have that White Merino Lace yarn in my stash.....

and I have been meaning to give this new beading method a try. I inherited these really tiny sized crochet hooks from my grandmother and I never thought I would have any use for them seeing I rarely, if ever crochet anything.

And of course, you know that you're suppose to get back up on the horse after it throws you off, right? Okay, technically, I suppose I should have gotten back up onto the same horse, instead of switching horses in mid stream, but I don't think it's a hard and fast rule, it's more of a guideline, yeah, that's it...a guideline.

And so I began,

Plan A. Knit a new mystery stole in a lovely white merino yarn from my stash with lovely white beads.

Things were going well.

Except I had my doubts about using the white beads, they weren't showing up very well, and as I saw the pattern developed I had a strong suspicion that it was very probable that the theme had something to do with the constellations and I was convinced that the beads were suppose to twinkle like stars so...

Plan B. Re knit it with more sparkly beads.

It was going well, or so I thought.

I was nearly done with clue 2 and I had started to put together the third and fourth clue charts when I realized I had knit the whole thing wrong! ( I'm sure that you've already been thinking to yourselves, I think she's doing something wrong, it doesn't look like all the other hundreds, nay thousands of mystery stoles that are being knitted. What can I say? I'm slow.

When I began the stole, I read the first four lines of instructions ( in which you knit every row). I then switched to the chart, which I had taped together , over the instruction line that read for the rest of the pattern knit only the first and last two of the even (or wrong side) rows and purl the rest of the wrong side rows. Duh.

(clearly, I have everyone* hoodwinked into believing I know what I am doing here...a knitting goddess, my ass, well, maybe if you count Sisyphus as a god)

*and when I say everyone, I am of course including myself in this delusion.

Plan C. Reknit it correctly, using the white beads again. (I changed my mind, so sue me.)

It was at this point that our cat, Hobbes, wanted to be sure that I understood that C also stands for cat.
So Hobbes decided that he had been too tame of late and after lulling me into being less than diligent about safely stowing my knitting before going to bed, decided he would have a go at the tube of beads and that oh so tempting ball of enticingly creamy looking lace yarn.

He chewed through the yarn and the bead tube, scattering the beads, but he did no real harm to the lace itself, and thereby sparing himself from having to using up one of his nine lives.

The beads were recovered, well, as many as we could find, and not counting any he may have swallowed, and with a handy spit splice on the yarn, we were back in business.

The tube, however, I'm afraid was a loss.

At the end of clue 2

At the end of clue 3.