Lifeline woes!

[afuna]

I love the idea of lifelines, and I've used them before in projects with a thicker weight. This time though, I'm making a very lacy shawl in laceweight yarn, used a lifeline of dental floss, and I'm running into problems.

Yesterday, I found a dropped stitch that had fallen some five rows back. While debugging that, I found another error in the repeat just above my lifeline. So much relief! I ripped back fifteen rows to my lifeline, and then realized that the dental floss wasn't holding the shape of the loops well enough.

It's not an issue with the lifeline having been picked up along with the stitch; the lifeline was sliding back and forth in a straight line before! It's more like the loop of the stitch has been pulled out of the stitch below, though they're still being held together by the lifeline. The lifeline ends up being twisted around one of the strands, and then becomes untwisted if I pick up both stitches and make the knit/purl for that row.

I'm three stitches in, and it feels like it would be a lot more pleasant to frog everything and just restart, but I want to make sure I don't run into the same thing with lifelines in the future.

Is it possible to use a stiffer material for a lifeline? Say an interchangeable circular cord, or maybe some wire?

Comments

[medicalmouse]

I use either my interchangeable cables or a piece of scrap yarn in a similar weight. I prefer the cables, though, since with the yarn I'll occasionally get the same problem you have here. I would think that something like floral wire might work too, although I've never tried it personally.

[afuna]

It is very reassuring to hear that I'm not the only one who has had trouble with using yarn as a lifeline! Most of the tutorials prefer the scrap yarn method over everything else, and I've been feeling incredibly inept that I couldn't make it work in the lace project (where I really needed it *g*)

I'm considering some jewelry wire that I found that's lying around unused...