my favorite bind off trick. part 2
My favorite trick for creating a bind off that won’t snap or break, involves increasing right before you bind off. I explained about the basic trick here yesterday.
In essence you’re creating a very subtle ruffle that will disappear once you block your shawl.
The ratio of stitches to increases (how often you increase) determines how pronounced the ruffle is.
Put another way, the more often you increase the more pronounce the ruffle is, the less often you increase more subtle the ruffle is.
Yesterday the directions I laid out had 1 increase for every 3 stitches, so your stitch count would increase by one third your original stitch count.
Evenly increasing one third of your original stitches works for really well for shawls with curved edges (circles, crescents, half circles, etc.)
However for squares, triangles, and other shawls with straight edges I find that increasing by a third gives you too much of a ruffle. So for shawls with straight edges, I like to increase the stitch count by one fifth. I [yo, k2tog, yo, k2tog, yo, k1] around or across.
FOR A SQUARE SHAWL
1. Finish your patterning.
2. Knit 1 round plain.
3. Increase round: [yo, k2tog, yo, k2tog, yo, k1] around.
4. Knit 1 round plain.
5. Bind off.
Of course if you don’t mind a little bit of ruffling you could absolutely increase your stitch count by a third on your square shawls. Or if you find that increasing by a third on your circular shawls is too much ruffle, only increase your stitch count by a fifth.
It’s your knitting, do what works for you.
my favorite bind off trick. part 1
One of my favorite tricks for creating a bind off that doesn’t break, actually has nothing to do with the bind off itself.
My favorite trick is to increase my stitch count right before I bind off. This way my bind off involves more stitches than the main body of my shawl.
Because there are more bind off stitches than main body stitches, each bind off stitch has to take up less space than each main body stitch.
For A Shawl Knit Flat
1. Finish your pattern, in the photo I just used a basic stockinette swatch.
2. If you’ve ended with a RS row, work a WS row.
3. To increase: work your border stitches, [yo, k1, yo, k2tog] to the opposite border, work your second border stitches.
4. Work a WS row.
5. Bind off.
FOR A SHAWL KNIT IN THE ROUND
1. Finish your pattern.
2. Knit 1 round.
3. To increase: [yo, k1, yo, k2tog] around.
4. Knit 1 round.
5. Bind off.
WORKING MORE SUBTLE INCREASES
But if you don’t want your increases to be obvious. Or you don’t want to work those extra two WS rows. Or you’re worried about running out of yarn. Or just don’t like the eyelet look. You can use make 1s or knit front and backs instead.
So for a shawl knit flat:
1. Finish your pattern, in the photo I just used a basic stockinette swatch.
2. To increase: work your border stitches, [m1*, k3] to the opposite border, work your second border stitches.
3. Bind off.
For a shawl knit in the round:
1. Finish your pattern.
2. To increase: [m1*, k3] around.
3. Bind off.
*if you prefer knitting into the front and back of the same stitch, replace the m1 with kfb.
I like this trick because it means I can block my shawls like crazy without every feeling like my bind off is going to break, plus the yarn overs make threading blocking wires practically painless, and I think they can add a nice design element to most shawls. For example,
in Tumbling Deco, the yarn overs blended right into the patterning.
and in Anwar I turned this into a design element, by working the final three rounds and the bind off in the main color (as opposed to the contrasting color), which tied the edge of the shawl back to the center of the shawl, and really made the design feel complete.
This trick has you increasing your stitch count by a third and is essentially creating a ruffle at the very edge of your shawl, which then gets blocked away. Increasing your stitch count by a third works great for shawls curved edges, but not so great for shawls with straight edges.
Tomorrow I’ll talk through using this idea on shawls with straight edges, squares, triangles, and the like.
5 tips for working an elastic bind off
“Anwar“
Having a bind off break sounds too horrible for words. Luckily I’ve never had it happen to me.
I use some combination of these tips & tricks with every project I bind off.
1. use a larger needle.
Go up two or three needle sizes for your bind off. So if you’re using a US 5 or 6 for the main body of the shawl, go up to a US 7 or 8 for the bind off.
I don’t use this idea often because I usually don’t want to go find a larger needle, but it’s a sure fire way of getting a looser bind off.
2. use an inherently stretchy bind off.
Some bind offs are naturally stretchier than others, the bind off that most of us learn when we first learn to knit (k2, pass 1st stitch over the 2nd, k1, pass 2nd stitch over 3rd, etc.) is very inelastic. So instead use something that’s more elastic such as Jeny’s Surprisingly Stretchy Bind Off, or the Decrease Bind Off.
3. relax.
No seriously, do what you need to do to relax before you start binding off.
Even the stretchiest bind off will loose a lot of it’s elasticity if you work it while stressed out, hunched up and yanking the yarn. Some people say to concentrate on working your bind off loosely, but I think that can easily lead to a sloppy bind off.
So I say just drop your shoulders, get a cup of tea, find a comfy seat and start binding off.
4. if you need to get up, get up.
If you need to pause in the middle of your bind off because something comes up, or you get tired of sitting. PAUSE.
Set your knitting to the side and come back to it when you have more time. It’s better than rushing to finish, because when we rush we tense up, when we tense up our knitting gets tighter, and tighter knitting leads to a more inelastic bind off.
Your knitting isn’t going anywhere, it’ll be there when you get back. (Though if you have a particularly inquisitive pet or child, you may want to hide it in the interim.)
5. increase your stitch count right before you bind off.
This is my favorite trick and I have a couple of upcoming posts about it that lay it out in full and get into the nuances, but basically you place a bunch of evenly spaced increases across your piece, a row or two before binding off.
This means your bind off has more stitches in it than the main body, and so each stitch has to take up less space when you block the piece. This trick works best for shawls, but you could use a variation on it for a garment.
And now that you know all my bind off secrets, got any tricks up your sleeve?
