Have you ever been knitting away on an intricately cabled project only to realise you’ve been doing it wrong for 20 or more rows?! Even worse, imagine noticing a mistake in brioche stitch and then fail miserably to rip back and subsequently ruining the whole piece… The absolute worst for me is having to frog intricate lace; successfully picking up every stitch when the row is made up of ssk’s, k2tog’s and yo’s and getting it right is basically impossible.
But no fear, this is why you need a lifeline!
Lifelines, sometimes referred to as safety lines, act as a safety net in the event you need to rip your knitting back. By threading a waste bit of yarn through a row or round of stitches, when you take the knitting needle out to unravel, the waste yarn will ‘catch’ the stitches at the point it was inserted. This means that the knitting won’t unravel further than you intended and stitches can then be transferred from the waste yarn back onto the knitting needle – just like putting stitches that have previously been on hold, back on the needle. Providing all stitches were caught by the lifeline, nothing should be lost – other than the offending mistakes that you’ve just ripped back, of course!
When should I insert a saftey line?
Short answer to this is whenever you want! However, they are most useful when inserted before a complex section of knitting. They are also helpful when placed at the start/end of a pattern repeat if the whole piece is complex. This means that if you make a mistake, you can frog back to the start of that repeat and then not have to worry about trying to work out what row/round you need to work to get back on track. Though, if you do decide to place a lifeline part way through a pattern, just make sure you jot down the row/round it was placed on as you may need to know later on!
How do I insert a lifeline?
You will need:
Some waste yarn – either finer or of a similar thickness to the yarn used for the project is helpful. Using a contrast colour is also useful as it helps to identify where the lifeline was inserted and it is easier to distinguish between the lifeline and actual stitch when it comes to picking them back up again.
A darning needle. Although, depending on your type of interchangeable knitting needle (if you are using them, of course), you may wish to use the interchangeable needle hack. If you do, you wont require a darning needle. However, the waste yarn does need to fit through the hole in the interchangeable needle so you will probably need a finer yarn/thread and possibly a smaller needle that will fit through too.
Using a darning needle to insert a lifeline.
Start by threading the waste yarn onto the darning needle. Then thread the needle/yarn through each stitch on the needle. Depending on the yarn used for the project, it can be easy to split the stitches so be careful of this when threading the darning needle through. It can be temping to push stitches together to thread more onto the darning needle at once. However, I recommend only picking up a few at a time as it means you can be more precise. It is much less likely that stitches will get split or even worse, missed entirely.
Here you can see the waste yarn running through the stitches along side the cable. If you also look further down the swatch you can see another lifeline that I inserted earlier (Blue Peter eat your heart out!). You can see here how problematic picking those stitches up might be without a lifeline! This is why for my Lanelands Shawl pattern (from which the lace pattern of this swatch originates), I recommend inserting lifelines intermittently so that knitters have a point to return to if frogging becomes necessary.
Using interchangeable knitting needles to insert a lifeline
Many interchangeable knitting needle brands have holes that are used to secure the attachment of the needle to the cable. By threading some waste yarn through this hole, a lifeline will be placed as the stitches pass over that point on the needle.
There are both pros and cons for doing it this way. One benefit is that it is quick. this is because as the stitches pass over the needle and onto the cable, the waste yarn is automatically thread through the stitches. This also means that there is no chance of stitches being missed or split. A downside to this method, however, is that it can be tricky threading the waste yarn through the hole in the first place and it can mean that it is also more difficult to move the stitches over the point where the waste yarn sits in the hole on the needle. You can see from the image above that I split my (plied) waste yarn down to 2 threads in order to make it possible to both pass onto a finer needle but also fit through the hole in my interchangeable needle.
Picking stitches up from a lifeline
If you have been unfortunate enough to have to frog your work back to a lifeline, pick the stitches back up just like you would pick stitches on hold. Push the needle tip through each saved stitch until all of the stitches are back on the needle. Sometimes the stitches may ‘disappear’ into the fabric. If this is the case then use the lifeline to pull the stitch out and catch it with the knitting needle. You may also find that as more stitches are picked up, the stitches on the needle become tight. This is because the waste yarn still sits alongside the needle so increases the diameter of the stitch. One way to counteract this would be to use a smaller needle size to pick up stitches – but make sure you remember to change back to the working needle before you continue knitting! I personally combat this by pulling the lifeline out of the stitches that have already been saved, then carrying on.
As I always say with knitting, providing you achieve what you need and you are happy with the results, there is no right or wrong way to do things.
Knit and be happy.