Ode to my Lifelines

I'd never used lifelines before this project and let me tell you, they've been, well, lifesavers. Really, I realized that I hadn't knitted a lot of lace before this project - some scarves, Branching Out, Wisp & Juno Regina, and the original Dayflower Cami that inspired the dress. Some projects with lace trimming or some such, but otherwise that's all.

Only one time have I had to unravel all the way to a lifeline for the whole dress - the first train decrease I did wind up taking out a whole 16 rows. That was kind of depressing. And there was the one isolated section where I dropped down to the lifeline and fixed one repeat of the chart. But just knowing the lifelines were there has been so good for me psychologically.

I took this picture to show off all my lovely lifelines. (And added some green arrows in MSPaint, since they're a little hard to see against the plaid sheet background.) The first is the purple - it's at the top of the border section. The second, pink, is at the top of the short row section. In this pic they're very close together, but at the deepest part of the short rows they're 12-18" apart. Then I placed the yellow lifeline before I started decreasing for the train and the blue one after the first train decrease. I've since pulled that blue lifeline; now it's just before the final group of train decreases, which is the one where I'll be decreasing from both sides in one repeat of the chart. I made a special new chart just for this section, but I really couldn't face another swatch, so I'm just knitting the whole darn thing. But I did at least have the sense to place a lifeline, so if it looks like crap, away it'll go again. Plan then is to pull the blue lifeline a second time and run it through at the top of the train section.

Plan after that is probably a couple more repeats on the 10 needles, then the final needle change down to the 8's. Can you believe that? FINAL NEEDLE CHANGE.

Clearly, I'm having a hard time with it.