There is an old hymn that shares the title for my post. I guess I’m older than I think I am because I remember singing it at a hymn sing as a young girl in Tenants Harbor, Maine. As soon as I typed my title, I had to search for the song (to make sure I wasn’t remembering “wrong”!) There it was. What a wonderful memory! (Click here for the link to YouTube.)

In knitting, a life line can be a project saver. I used one just this weekend when I was finishing my Jimmy Beans Wool Downton Abbey Mystery KAL … a lovely shawlette. I was really happy with the project and had a bit of yarn left over that I thought MIGHT be enough to have a third repeat of the lace edge. On Thursday night I expressed my concern to my knitting friends and Kelly suggested that I give it a try but use a life line (just in case)! What a wonderful suggestion.

Here’s what mine looked like when it was being blocked …

My Shawlette in Malabrigo Silky Merino color 856 Azules

Never used a life line? Really!? Well, I have to confess that I hadn’t used one before. But it’s really quite simple. This is all it takes …

Life Line (pink) … Wow! I need a manicure! 🙂

All you have to do is get a different color bit of yarn. Since I was knitting a lace piece with several hundred stitches, I kept it really long so I didn’t drop stitches off the life line. That would be disastrous!

With your tapestry needle, thread the life line (pink) through every stitch.

Thread your tapestry needle and  starting on one end of your work, run the life line through every stitch. (Note: do not run the life line through your markers as this will cause trouble when you go to knit! Run the life line under the markers.)

What you need to do before you start knitting again is make sure that the life line is “in the same place” and no wound around the needle. I made sure that my life line was beneath the needle sitting on the bottom of my last row of stitches. Once you start knitting, just make sure that you don’t knit your life line in with your stitches.

I was super lucky this time and I did have enough yarn. I may have been able to knit ONE more row … but I was concerned that I wasn’t going to have enough for the one knit row and then a bind off row. So, my last row was a knit and bind off at the same time.

I’m really pleased with the end result … I can’t wait to wear it!

Gone knitting!