I made a scarf for my boyfriend last year and it is just too long. I made it with a very basic ribbed pattern. Now (although it is already bound off and he has been wearing it) would like to take off about 30 rows. how can I do this without ruining the scarf?
Undo the bind off and rip back to the length you want, then bind off again.
well that sounds easy enough…Is there anything specific about undoing the bind off that I should keep in mind?
Nope, the tricky part is finding the tail you wove in, and you would have to pull it out of the last stitch. Then just pull the yarn and unzip it. You might look at the video on the Tips page under Fixing Mistakes for how to get your sts back on the needle if you haven’t done that before.
The hardest part is probably going to be trying to get those stitches back on the needle to BO again. I, invariably, miss one and then I have a dropped stitch to deal with. No fun.
Since you are wanting to make it shorter, I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t just cut off the very end of the scarf. Cut the bind off edge off and one row, that will really make it easier because you don’t have to find your end and everything. When you get it cut off there will be an end somewhere that you can start pulling on and it will just undo. Take off as much as you want, put it back on the needle, and bind off again.