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

[dhae_knight_1]

I'm knitting socks from Cat Bordhi's 'Insouciant', so I've experimented a lot with life-lines. I've used scrap yarn (soft and flexible, doesn't hold the shape of the stitches well), floral wire (good at holding the stitches, bur stiff and unyielding, making it hard to knit the next round) and, lately, circular needles (excellent at holding the shape, pliable enough that knitting the next round isn't hard - only trouble is it can be fiddly feeding the regular needle back into the stitches on top of the circular cable).

Obviously, I can only speak to this in socks, but it works likea charm, and never shows in the knitting later.

[afuna]

Thank you! very nice breakdown of the effects of various materials. I've gotten a couple good recs for things to try out.

I tried circular needles, and I ran into the fiddliness, but I might try it again on a lace project with bigger needles (mine are only 3.5mm right now as compared to my smallest needles which are 2mm; it might be looser comparatively with a larger needle?)