Lifelines

Of yarn and drafts and starting over

I put something called a “lifeline” in the Belclare Shawl by Erineen Designs that I am working on this summer. It’s this year’s featured knit-along for the Maine Yarn Cruise.

I learned to knit when I was 20, and in the three decades since, I’ve never needed a lifeline. I see now I could’ve used one (or 100) over the years of ripping out backwards Aran cables and uneven colorwork. Instead, I made mistake after mistake and started over and over until I either got the pattern right or decided to live with how I got it wrong.

The Belclare is the first time I’ve ever worked in lace. I thought I was an “experienced knitter” going into it. But I was trussed up in knots and tangled in threads almost from the cast on. I kept dropping stitches, and missing yarn overs, and beginning again and again.

After many false starts, the Belclare Shawl is finally coming together.

One of the best parts of a knit-along is the community. The designer hosts a Facebook group where everyone can ask questions, share their work, and be inspired by all the variations on the common pattern. It’s kind of like some writers’ groups, especially those that incorporate prompts. I’m a big fan of Gateless Writing Salons for this very reason.

After about the 17th time I began the Belclare again, I turned to the knit-along group for support.

In addition to getting lots of sympathy from my fellow knitters, the tech person posted a stitch count guide, so we could keep track of what’s supposed to be on the needle.

The designer also recommended using lots of stitch markers and inserting lifelines into the project. A lifeline is basically a thread pulled through a row that indicates that up to that point, your pattern, stitch count, and so on is solid. If you make a mistake beyond the lifeline, you only have to rip back to that row.

It’s helpful to use a contrasting color as a lifeline, so you can see it in the work. By the time I finish this project, I may use every single stitch marker in my collection, and possibly a handful from the special box of Nana’s heirloom notions.

How did I make it this far as a knitter without lifelines?

Or, for that matter, in life itself?

You mean I don’t have to go back - at least not all the way back - and start over from scratch?

Earlier this week, I opened and closed (and opened and closed) my memoir-in-progress.

There should be lifelines in writing projects, too.

It’s not that I keep ripping out my manuscript. No. It’s more that as I’ve lived alongside the work over the last year of intentionally crafting it, I find new sections to revise upon every reading. But if I redraft one scene, I have to track down all the other places in the piece that need to be brought into narrative agreement, too.

It’s almost as maddening as dropping stitches or adding them where they don’t belong in the Belclare Shawl.

Actually, it’s even more frustrating that I can’t seem to keep my own story straight. Pull one thread of it, and the whole thing unravels. Some truth comes out and then everything else feels like a lie. It’s not, but every new understanding, shift in perspective, or heightened detail changes - however subtly - the whole thing.

I open a new Scrivener project, copy in what I am feel pretty good about, and draft it all again.

I’m not sure what a lifeline would be in a writing project. I am open to suggestions, since the knitting metaphor only extends so far. It’s not as if I can hook a bunch of sentences on a string and be certain all the ones that came before make absolute sense.

As I mentioned, I get a little (a lot) lost in the land of revision. If I love anything about writing, it’s crafting with words. Why say something one way when you can say it five ways and then pick the one you like best? This is what keeps me coming back to the page even more than the heady rush of images and emotions that gets me there in the first place.

So I could use a lifeline right about now. If you’ve got any hacks for moving a narrative writing project forward without needlessly going backward first, please toss them my way!

(My stash bins are so full that I could easily write a Substack called A Knitting from the Yarn of Yesterday. For those who are interested, it’s not too late to sign up for the Maine Yarn Cruise, an annual event that - this year - features 24 shops all over the state. The goal is to check into all of them by the middle of October. If you do, you get entered into a grand prize drawing. There are also other perks along the way. Personally, I don’t do it to win anything (and I am not being paid to promote it through this post). I like being in community with other knitters just as much as I do with other writers. The knit-along goes through Aug. 11, but it’s probably not too late to sign up for that, too.)