The joy of lifelines...and the agony of frogging

If you knit lace, you know what I'm talking about. Last night, I was working on my Shetland Shawl. It's usually my lunch time project, but I'm not making fast enough progress on it when I only work on it for 30 minutes (at most) a day. So, I brought it home and was zipping along. Then the dog needed to go out. No worries - I was on a purl row, so didn't have to be concerned about where I left off. I just put some point protectors on the end and took the dog out. When I came back to pick up my knitting, it had gotten wedged in the seat cushion - must have been some evil knitting witch that did it. Thing is - I didn't realize it, just went to pick it up and off came the point protector and several stitches. The yarn is so thin and the stitches so small that, despite my best efforts, I couldn't put them back on the needle and be assured that they were all there. I could have cried. Okay I did a little. Now was the time to pray that this lifeline thing I had read about worked. A lifeline is where you string something through a good row so that if you need to frog (undo your knitting) those stitches will be sitting pretty on that string. I had begun to wonder if the pain of putting the lifeline in and then the annoyance of it when I'm knitting the next row (the string sometimes tries to work it's way into the next row sometimes) was worth it. Let me tell you friends, it was. I was able to go back to that lifeline and pick up all my stitches and start back up. I lost a few rows of knitting, but thankfully no more than that.
BTW - it is very cool to see the shawl take form. I've never knit with such thing yarn - and there is thinner stuff than what I am using. When I go from working on the shawl using fingering weight yarn, to working on my current blanket, which is worsted weight -it makes the worsted feel HUGE! May I also say that I love both yarns I'm using right now. The color of the shawl is a baby blue - just lovely. And the yarn for the blanket is vibrant and soft, so soft. I think I would use the worsted yarn for everything if it weren't just a little on the expensive side.