I have a Patons pattern lace chart with a symbol of a black square and the instruction states "ignore symbol no sts???
Can anybody help me?
You ignore the square - it means ‘there’s no stitch on your needle for this box, so go on to the next one for the next st’. More or less. It’s like a written instruction that says k 0 or inc every 4th row 0 times for your size. You skip the instruction and go to the next one.
The squares on a chart more represent actions, they’re not stitches until you finish a row. That’s why a yo takes one box - it doesn’t use a stitch but results in one - and decs only take one box even though they may use 2 or 3 sts, but they result in just one stitch.