I was on a short vacation to Mesa AZ to celebrate my mother-in-laws 80th birthday. Had a grand time.
While I was there I slipped in to the Fiber Factory (a Great store) and was talking about having to pull out 10 or 15 rows and having a hard time getting everything back on the needles right. Lady said that I should use a safety thread every 10 or so rows and it makes getting back on the needles easier. I did not have time to get a demo of how this is done.
Do any of you know about this safety thread thing?
It’s called a ‘lifeline’ and Amy has a video on it [B][COLOR=red]here[/COLOR][/B]… just scroll down to ‘fixing mistakes’, or you could google ‘adding a lifeline’ and you’ll get heaps of results. Your basically threading a piece of thin yarn through your stitches at a particular point, some do it every 10 stitches, every pattern repeat, etc, so they don’t have to rip all the way back. It has saved my life many times!
I highly recommend it too! I learned the hard way what lifelines are all about. :oo:
I’m currently working on the thermal sweater from Knitty and it has a gazillion stitches per row and I don’t completely understand the next step in the pattern. So I’m DEFINITELY going to put a lifeline in right before I start the shaping because no way would I be able to get almost 300 stitches back on the needles in the right order of knits and purls. Just the thought! :shock:
Just my preference, but instead of a piece of thread or string for a lifeline, I like to use heavy fishing line. It is stiff enough that I don’t need to go through the hassle of threading a needle, it is clear so it doesn’t disrupt my view of how the pattern is going, and it pulls back out like a dream.
I use lifelines even in plain knitting… but I have a two year old and at any given time my knitting can be disrupted, knocked out of my hands, etc, so it is necessary!
I usually do one every repeat, and if it is a particularly long repeat, I might use two different coloured lifelines, so one colour is always the halfway mark of a repeat and the other is the end of the full repeat.
I used embroidery floss the last time I did lace. Because the lace pattern was so complicated, I really needed it. I also used one when I was doing sockwars because if someone else needed to work on my socks I wanted them to know where they should pick up from.
