How do you do a lifeline?

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Permalink Reply by silverthorn on March 28, 2008 at 9:03pm

you thread a thin waste yarn (I like unwaxed dental floss) through the stitches. If you make a mistake you can frog back to the lifeline and easely pick up your stitches. :) Hope that helps.

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Permalink Reply by shel on March 29, 2008 at 4:36pm

Thanks for the reply. One more question.... do you thread with your sewing needle the live stitches and then just knit over it?

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Permalink Reply by silverthorn on March 30, 2008 at 1:04pm

Hey Shel, I had the hardest time trying to reply... oh well. What I do, and I have no clue if this is correct, but I thread my blunt finishing needle and slip it through the row I just completed. I've tried threading it through live stitches, but wind up knitting it into the row, major pain picking it out. ;-)

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Permalink Reply by Jillied on July 4, 2008 at 5:34pm

I put a piece of dental floss through the little hole in my Option needles...and then just knit the row. The only thing I have to be careful of is that it also goes through my markers, so I have to adjust them (usually do this on the next row) It takes a few minutes but saves hours of time if you have to frog several rows.

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Permalink Reply by Rae on August 26, 2008 at 3:51pm

Jillied, What's an Option needle? I was taught to do a lifeline by using a blunt needle to thread something, I use crochet cotton, through the live stitches. I'm currently working on an afghan in the round with about 1,000 stitches on it, headed to 1,400. I've stopped bothering with that long ago. Your system sounds better.

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Permalink Reply by MushroomMom on September 20, 2009 at 9:47am

How do you get the markers off the lifeline? Are you using round jump rings or split rings? I have all my markers on the dental floss and do not see a way to get them off.

Thanks,

Mushroom Mom

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Permalink Reply by sunshine115 on September 17, 2008 at 3:34pm

I am a self taught knitter, and have just started working on lace. I bought the Elizabeth I Patterns and have completed two of the scarves and love knitting lace! but I have never heard of a lifeline and would like to know what it is, also what does 'frog' mean in knitting?

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Permalink Reply by Alison Jeppson Hyde on September 20, 2008 at 2:30pm

A lifeline is a bit of thin waste yarn--dental floss was suggested above, and that's a good idea--that you run through the stitches on your needle to hold them if you should have to rip back to that point.

There are two types of ripping back: one is to tink back, tink being knit spelled backwards and to match the sound each stitch makes; this is when you undo one stitch at a time while still on the needles. To frog it is to take the project off the needles entirely and "rip it, rip it," a pun on the sound a frog makes.

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Permalink Reply by sunshine115 on September 22, 2008 at 8:08am

Ok, I get the humor in 'frog-ing". Pretty good. Thanks for the info. On the lifeline, if I understand correctly there are two techniques. One is to" knit" a strand of unwaxed dental floss into your project, by holding it with your yarn and knitting the two together for one row. So if you have to un-knit you have a saved, correct back up point. The disadvantage to this method is that it is difficult to remove from the knitted article. The second method is to use a blunt needle to run the unwaxed dental floss or lighter weight yarn thru the loops that are on the needle before knitting the next row. The disadvantage of this technique is that it is a bit more time consuming. Is this right? How often is a lifeline inserted into a pattern? At the end of the pattern repeat would seam logical, or more often if it is a longer pattern repeat. Again thanks for the info! I appreciate everyone’s willingness to share their knitting wisdom!

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Permalink Reply by Nanaloves2knit on March 9, 2009 at 10:38am

If you knit the dental floss with the yarn, won't it unravel along with the yarn if a stitch is dropped? I run my dental floss thru the live stitches, either by using the hole in the Options needles, or with a tapestry needle if I am using small needles which do not have the hole because they are not interchangeable. Lifelines are an incredible time saver. If I am doing something intricate, I use one as often as every other row.

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Permalink Reply by Alison Jeppson Hyde on April 3, 2009 at 10:45pm

It will indeed unravel with the yarn if knitted together with it; running it through the loops is what works. How often to do this is totally up to the knitter.

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Permalink Reply by Shar1ford on May 13, 2009 at 8:24pm

One trick to finding immediate boo boos is to place a stitch marker after each sequence of stitches, that way if you watch the tv and loose count and make a mistake, you will see it immediately. Once I started doing that, I didn't need the lifeline because within that 13 stitch pattern sequence my mistake became glaringly obvious when I didn't have enough stitches or had to many. Also, if you use wool (noro dk) you can finger felt the ends when you start a new ball and can't even tell it was joined. You will LOVE this book so much, you might consider purchasing a copy from Amazon.com. You can usually pick them up cheaper...but this book is worth full price!!

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