I must have known about this little trick, because I used it on sweaters I made before I found it in Cat Bordhi’s New Pathways for Sock Knitters: Book One. It’s an incredibly easy way to handle the knitsch that happens when we bind off any project worked in the round.
Tag Archives: Binding off
Working: The Neck Ribbing
Because I know from my swatching that 7 rounds are enough to counteract rolling in this yarn, I’ll do that many rounds on the neck, compared to the 10 I did on the sleeves and bottom edge.
Knit-Up Stitch Counts
Starting at the back/right sleeve raglan join, I will knit up one for one on the back, sleeves, and bottom center of the front neck. Those are the easy places.
Bind Off in Pattern
When we bind off a project, we should almost always bind off “in pattern.” That means that as we work our way across the bind-off row, we work each stitch as though we are working the current pattern row.
So if we are binding off on what is row three of the pattern, then we work each stitch as though we were actually working row three. We just happen to be binding off each stitch as we work it.
In ribbing, for example, we knit the knits and purl the purls as we bind off. But in seed stitch, we knit the purls and purl the knits.
(“Almost always” as long as the instructions don’t say otherwise. But note that many project instructions won’t tell you to bind off in pattern, even though the should.
Also, of course, binding off in pattern doesn’t apply if we’re doing something like a three-needle bind off.)