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.
bind offs, pattern writing, samples & swatches
Through the final stockinette section, and onto the bind off, of the never ending shawl. I’m using Jeny’s Surprisingly Stretchy Bind Off, so it might take a bit.
Writing up the patterns for the pile of shawls on my desk. Though the grey & yellow shawl is Izar, and just likes hanging out on my desk.
Knitting sample returned. I love getting knitting sample back, because it gives me a chance to fall in love with the piece all over again. This one is the glasses case from Sara Barbour’s “Stitching in the Stacks.”
All the swatches! One for a shhhhh (secret) project. One for a shawl to work on once the never ending shawl ends. Some for a new Shawl Geometry Book. And the rest because even after two posts I still have more to say about binding off for shawls.
