See the white thread woven through this piece? That's my life line made of dental floss.

Do you know what lifelines are? I didn’t either until a friend at the knitting guild clued me in. I thought they were a brilliant idea and worth a post.

Lifelines are a way to save your game, so to speak. When you are working with a complicated pattern or difficult yarn – especially lace knitting – it can be difficult to recover from errors. Heck, sometimes its hard to even see them. You just know that your count didn’t work out right or it doesn’t look quite right. That’s where lifelines can be a life saver!

How to Make a Lifeline

Using dental floss weave it across your entire work at a point where you know the pattern is correct. You don’t have to use dental floss, but its cheap and easy, fine enough not to get in your way, and it adds minty freshness to your work. Use lifelines multiple points throughout your work – especially if you are working with lace. For the shawl I’m working on, I am doing a lifeline before each pattern repeat. Then, if at any point you need to unravel and get back to a point where you know the work is correct, you can without worrying about any stitches getting lost and without worrying about whether you’ve unraveled to the spot you think you did.

Since I started using lifelines on my very first real lace knit project, I’ve used them 3 times. Wow am I glad I learned about this handy tip! So I thought I’d pass it on.

Do you have any life saving knitting techniques? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.