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

[aunty_marion]

I've used embroidery cotton - the Perlé cotton (I think it's No.5?) as lifelines on laceweight with great success. It's firm enough to hold the stitches properly, and doesn't stick to the main yarn at all (which can be a problem with some yarns!). It works on socks, too.

I had two in my Hex shawl at the points where it was possible to insert one - there are two places in the pattern of P one row, K one row, P one row, so I inserted it after the knit row where it wouldn't interfere with the lace pattern. And I had about 6 lifelines, eventually, in my Traveling Woman (on row 8 of the pattern repeat, which is suggested as a good place), because I did 10 repeats of the pattern.

[afuna]

Thank you :) I thought about using leftover sock yarn briefly, but kicked that notion out of my head once I remembered that wool would stick to wool, and probably leave me crying >_>