Shoot me a Life Line

(Or: Why you should make nice at your local knitting store)

I feel most fortunate to have access to five knitting stores in my area. These stores serve not only as a purveyors of fiber and products, but more important, as sources of knowledge, and best of all, the ladies who work there always turn into friends. After all, we all adore yarn!

I don't really feel too bad about the lace debacle of yesterday. Yes, it's going to be a drag to knit that all over again. But I really did learn a lot. I also got some fabulous tips from the knitting store that I didn't see in the lace books I am using. I'd like to pass on one of these awesome tips.

Because it is so difficult, if not impossible to rip out lace, mostly because of the yarn overs (the stitch that makes the "holes" in the lace), my yarn shop Doc told me to cast a "life line" in my lace as I am knitting.

Here's how it works: After you've knit a section for a couple of hours or so, closely examine your work. If you find it up to your standards, take a smaller, contrasting yarn and thread it through all the stitches on your needle, securing it gently on the sides. Continue knitting another section and repeat. Then if you make a big mistake, you can rip back to the threaded row and continue onwards instead of having to tear the entire work out. Brilliant, isn't it?

Below you can see the little yellow life line running through my new lace:

Now the absolute best thing to do is to take a class, where the wise teacher tells you all these things from the get-go. Unfortunately, no one was offering beginning lace making at this time, so I did not have that option.