Neck shaping

#1

I’ve already posted this on the KAL post, but this forum gets a lot more traffic so I though I’d post here too.

So I just got to the neck shaping part of the back of my sweater and I’m completely confused by the next instructions. I had 34 stitches on my needles after the shoulder shaping. The instructions said to bind off 3 stitches at the beginning of the next two rows, which I do. The next directions are as follows:

Next Row (RS): Bind off 2 sts, k until there are 3 sts on RH needle, join another ball of yarn and bind off center 18 sts, k to end. Working both sides at once, bind off 2 sts at beg of the next 3 rows and AT THE SAME TIME, dec 1 st at each neck edge once.

It seems like binding off 18 stitches at this point will leave me without enough stitches to continue the other bind-offs and decreases. Also it seems like it will leave the neckline asymmetrical.

So what exactly is going on here?

#2

What I see is you have 34 and take off 3 at each end, leaves you with 28

You bind off the center 18 stitches and you should have 10–5 on each side of the neck.

You’re right, you can bind off 7 from the 5.

Maybe you should bind of 2 from each shoulder side twice and one from each neck edge? That would keep them even and get your shoulders bound off.