Counting stitches while binding off

#1

Oh I feel soooo stupid. I’m working on a sweater… first one. It’s also the first pattern I’ve worked on where I have to bind off a certain number of stitches, and leave a certain number on the needle. How do I count the stitches when I bind off? Do I count the number of stitches left after I start binding off (ie… the first two stitches bound off leave one on the needle to bind off the next… oh, crazy), or do the two first stitches count as #'s 1 and 2 and so on? I’m so confused. Sorry this doesn’t make sense.

I need to bind off 38 stitches and i don’t know how to count them as I bind off, that’s it in a nutshell.

thanks,
Dan

#2

Count the stitch that’s passed over the other - that’s the bind off. If I have more than a few, I just start binding off and count the chains on the edge. Also knit the number of stitches before the bound off ones, then knit 2 more, pass the 2nd stitch from the end of the right needle over the one on the end and that’s one st bound off. In making the last bound off stitch, you have to knit one from the left over sts at the end and that will still be on the right needle. Then just knit the rest of them.

#3

Yes. Every time you pass one over, count that as 1. I’m not that good at “reading” my work after it’s done, so I probably wouldn’t be able to count chains. But I did use a pattern that called for bind off stitches in the middle of the row. Sometimes, I would just have to subtract what’s left from what I started with, meaning if I started with 100 stitches, and part-way through my bind-off I had 20 on the left needle and 45 on the right, it meant I had bound off 35 stitches.

And like suzeeq said, if the pattern says to knit 10 then bind off 38, you have to knit 10, then begin binding off by first knitting 2 before passing the first over the second.

Then, the pattern I had said to “knit 4, [I]including[/I] the one already on the right needle from your last bind-off stitch”

#4

“knit 4, [I]including[/I] the one already on the right needle from your last bind-off stitch”

Yeah, that just means include the one on the needle in the 4 sts, so you would just knit 3 more.