Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Lifeline - taking time to save time
Last week I talked to Himself about lifelines in lace, in the context of, "I may need you to stop by Pearl Art & Craft on your way back from the BSO matinee to pick me up more perle cotton for my knitting kit."
Turns out I did have a spare skein of perle cotton already, so that was unnescessary. But I felt I couldn't take the time to put in lifelines because, after all, I wanted to be knitting. I also had a couple sessions of losing hours each due to having to rip back.
Sunday night I figured out that each rip back had come after one of the series of rows where the marker shift several times in succession. And I was about to come up to another one. Himself suggested ever so gently but insistantly (having had enough of of his little sunshine suddenly turn all snarky on him), that I put in a lifeline, just in case.
I strung the perle cotton through the purl row back, having clumped all the stitches together on the thinner cable the circular needle and put the tapsetry needle through each stitch but avoided the stitch markers.
Disadvantages:
1. It took about 10 minutes that could otherwise have been knitting.
2. Having the perle cotton in the stitch you're trying to knit makes it a little tighter to work that next row.
Advantage:
I haven't had to rip back yet.
Whether it's luck, familiarity with how the pattern behaves, or what, I don't know. The test will be taking the Peacock to knitting group tonight (if it's not pouring rain) and seeing if it comes back without needing to be ripped. Hopefully there will be the usual happy chaos tonight and no interuptions of folks insisting I hold things up when I'm right in the middle of something.
Turns out I did have a spare skein of perle cotton already, so that was unnescessary. But I felt I couldn't take the time to put in lifelines because, after all, I wanted to be knitting. I also had a couple sessions of losing hours each due to having to rip back.
Sunday night I figured out that each rip back had come after one of the series of rows where the marker shift several times in succession. And I was about to come up to another one. Himself suggested ever so gently but insistantly (having had enough of of his little sunshine suddenly turn all snarky on him), that I put in a lifeline, just in case.
I strung the perle cotton through the purl row back, having clumped all the stitches together on the thinner cable the circular needle and put the tapsetry needle through each stitch but avoided the stitch markers.
Disadvantages:
1. It took about 10 minutes that could otherwise have been knitting.
2. Having the perle cotton in the stitch you're trying to knit makes it a little tighter to work that next row.
Advantage:
I haven't had to rip back yet.
Whether it's luck, familiarity with how the pattern behaves, or what, I don't know. The test will be taking the Peacock to knitting group tonight (if it's not pouring rain) and seeing if it comes back without needing to be ripped. Hopefully there will be the usual happy chaos tonight and no interuptions of folks insisting I hold things up when I'm right in the middle of something.
