Knitters - lifelines and brioche

[SinkGirl]

I’ve been knitting for about 8 years and I’ve never bothered with lifelines before even when I was learning lace knitting, but two colour brioche has defeated me, I’ve never had to rip out a piece of knitting so many times.

I have some Knitpro and Addi interchangeables with holes for a lifeline but they are bloody tiny - for those who use them, how?! I tried some 4ply but couldn’t thread that through either.

Also, it looks so uneven to me - will blocking help?

What type of yarn is it? If it's wool it will block well but acrylic doesn't block so well.

I haven't used those needles but I did put a lifeline in something I knitted recently, i used a needle to thread some spare yarn through though!

It looks lovely :) i haven't dared try brioche yet.

It’s wool and alpaca so should block well, must say I don’t usually bother 😬 I know stuff looks so much better blocked but I’ve never been very good at it. Need some wires I think

Brioche itself is easy - the problem is that if you drop a stitch it’s really hard to figure out what’s going on so without lifelines I was having to rip out the whole section!

Finished - there’s a whole row that’s wrong and throws the pattern off and I really wanted to go back but had bailed on lifelines by then and couldn’t face frogging so much work. Working on another brioche pattern now 😬

Wow, I'd just like to say thank you. I've been knitting on and off for years and about to start knitting a blanket as a Christmas present. I was worried that I might mess up a row. I'd never heard of 'lifelines' in knitting before so Googled it. Sounds perfect! Thank you for that nugget of information! Good luck with your knitting!

No problem - I just bought a new set of Addi Click interchangeable needles and you can buy cables for that that have a little slit in them for adding a lifeline. I’ve now started something way more difficult so I’m definitely going to make use of them!

You could try using thread (or fine crochet yarn) rather than yarn in your life line?

I tried that but then found it more difficult to pick up the stitches. Will try my new Addi cables when I get to the tricky part of this one! To be honest as it went on I got better at fixing mistakes or dropped stitches (sods law, I never drop stitches when it’s an easy pattern!). Still have no idea what I did wrong on that row. Should have tried some easier brioche first 😂