Saturday, May 26, 2012

Brady Scarf from Ruhama's - Day 2


Mind the bind...


Bind off’s are my least favorite part of knitting.  Not because it means the project is over--which especially in this case it doesn’t mean at all--but because they never come out right for me.  I’m leery of scarves knit lengthwise because my cast-on and bind-off never come out close to each other.  I’ve got a few that look more like parenthesis than scarves, if you know what I mean.

At first I thought of this scarf as a way to change that.  Before I’m done, I’ll be given hundreds of chances to match my cast-on with my bind-off.  That worries me a bit, as I think the backward loop bind-on is the least manageable.  I always end up with an extra length of yarn between the stitches when I go to knit the next row.  It looks sloppy.

What’s helped?  It should come as no surprise to you that what’s helped the most is (drumroll, please....) reading the directions.  

Oh, the novelty of such an idea!  Normally, my go-to bind-off is the one where you knit two stitches together, then put the stitch back onto the left needle, knit that one together with the next one, etc.  And for the first two repeats of the pattern, that’s exactly what I did.

Which is not the bind-off recommended by the pattern.  It might be important to follow their directions, don’t you think? 

So, when I shifted to the knit two, slip the first stitch over bind-off, things lined up much more nicely.   Imagine that--the designer actually knowing which technique to use!  For a writer, you’d think I’d show the pattern author a bit more respect.

Like I always say, knitting teaches you more about life than you think.

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