I had a great question asked of me today about what exactly safety lines are in knitting, so I will try to explain this. A safety line in knitting is a piece of yarn which has been threaded through all the stitches on a row. I do this by taking a needle and piece of yarn and threading it through the stitches of a row I just completed. For my sister, Mavis, she uses dental floss instead of yarn.

Safety lines are often used when one is working on a lace pattern. This gives you a safety net for when you make the inevitable mistakes, so you know a good row to go back to in order to fix those mistakes. You would then record the row number for each safety line allowing you an easy method of locating a good row on the pattern that makes the row on the shawl. From what I've read every 10 rows is normal, but I'm a scaredy cat and decided every 6 rows was better for me.

If you look at the picture of my shawl, you'll notice there are pieces of colored yarn threaded through the top third of the shawl. These are my safety lines and can easily be pulled out at any time. I pulled out the first 3 lines I put in last night and will continue doing this as I work my way up the shawl.

I have known about safety lines for years, but never used them before last night. Normally when I do knitted lace work it's a repeated pattern and easy to trace a mistake down a few rows and fix it. However, with this particular shawl pattern it is not a repeatable pattern. This ends up creating a beautiful design, but ultimately makes a more complicated pattern to work and not something you can put stitch markers in as easily to keep track of where you are. Basically the only thing I could use a stitch marker for is to show me the center stitch of the shawl.

Hopefully this explains safety lines a little better. I am still a new comer to them, but I think they are my new best friend for knitting the more complicated lace designs, especially if they ultimately save me more time and create less frustration from my knitting mistakes. I would really like to finish the shawl this time around. :)

-Myrtle