HELP!!! I am almost finished my sweater. The Pattern calls for binding off 6 stiches EACH edge for 10 rows. I know how to bind off going right to left. How do I bind off on the left edge of a row?
How to bind of stiches on both edges for each row?
You can’t BO at the end of a row, so you will have to BO at the beginning of a WS row. First row, RS, BO 6, work to end of row, turn and BO 6 sts, work to end of row. Do this 4 more times.
I can’t do that. The pattern says… “At each edge, bind off 4 sts 9 times”. So, in total I will be binding off 8X9 or 72 stitches. If I do it at the beginning of every row… it will take 18 rows instead… I did the math… and they truly mean 4 sts at each edge.
Yes, you can do that. Each edge means both sides of the piece, but that doesn’t have to be on the same row, or every row. The ws row binds off at the left edge. You really can’t BO at the end of a row, so you have to do it at the beg of all rows. BO 4 sts 9 times at both edges will take 18 rows.
Maybe it would help if we look at the pattern together. This sounds like a Drops patterns which are written in a different style then translated, and you can’t always take them literally. Can you post a link?
The pattern specifies some rows to decrease stitches at the beginning of every row vs “at each edge”. Again, when I did the math it showed they really meant at each edge and every row. When it was just 1 stitch, I just knitted two together on the left hand side. When you are talking 4 stitches, they starts to look strange. Is there any other way to “decrease” stitches on the left hand side vs the right? Maybe thats my mistake.
Also, if I do as you suggest, my final product will end up being 10" vs the 6" that they say.
http://www.straw.com/cpy/patterns/iceland-VCollarJacket.html
Heres the pattern. Look at the section on the Collar… Do the math. Gauge is about 4 stitches per inch. So… If you follow with my logic… 228-12-72-100 leave 44 stitches exactly as they describe.
“228-12-72-100 leave 44 stitches exactly as they describe.”
Yes, that’s correct. But it doesn’t address the row gauge and the length of the collar, which is what you’re dealing with. Binding off 4 sts at the beginning of 18 rows still decreases 72 stitches, and a BO of 5 sts over 20 rows decreases 100 sts.
At the top it says 16 rows = 4 inches… so 4 rows per inch. This is what I’ve been experiencing too. So, with the collar you bind all of after 6"… Which would be about 24 rows. So, again… 38 rows (plus the 6 before for 42 rows) would be too many based on what you described. Since it is a collar, you want the right and left hand sides to look the same. I guess I will just stitch 2 together 4 times to reduce 4 stitches on each side.
I wish there was a schematic so we’d know how long the collar is supposed to be. The 6" is where you change to a smaller needle, it doesn’t indicate the total length of the collar. The 16 rows/4" are on the largest needle, and since you change to smaller needles at 3" and again at 6", the 4 rows per inch [U]will not[/U] be the gauge all the way through.
Really, there isn’t a way to BO at the end of the row and k2tog 4 times is going to have a puckered edge, not a smooth one like binding off. Try it that way and see if you’re happy with it, then try it as I suggested.
Thanks so much for your help. I’m really thinking I interpretted the “each edge dec 1 st every row” to mean “bind off 1 stich”. I was worried about it looking ruffly too. But, I’ll try it and see. Thanks again for being out there!!!
Decrease can be used to mean an actual dec or a BO. For one stitch, it seems smoother to do a decrease, a BO leaves a little jog. But for more than one stitch, a BO works better. You can decrease at both the beg and end of a row too.