Lifeline woes!
Jan. 29th, 2012 09:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
afuna posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
knittingI 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?
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?
(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-06 11:34 am (UTC)A lifeline is a length of material threaded through stitches, and used to help recover in case of mistakes. It may be inserted either during the row, or after knitting the row.
It works by "holding" the loops of the row. If you drop a stitch and it runs down several rows of complex knitting, or you notice a problem several rows later, it's sometimes faster and easier to rip back several rows worth of knitting, instead of tinking back one stitch at a time. So a lifeline ideally lets you rip back those rows, and then make it easier to pick up the stitches from the lifeline back onto the needle.
Like scrap yarn in a provisional cast on, you're meant to remove it in the end, yup!
(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-06 03:14 pm (UTC)