Friday, July 11, 2008

Sock tutorial, bind off and finishing.

Sorry this took so long to post! Life has been busy. So has my knitting, I've been working on WAY too many projects! Anyway, here is the final part of the sock tutorial, the bind off and finishing. Sorry about the picture quality, we need to buy a new camera battery charger so these were taken with my cell phone. Gotta love technology!




Here they are, finished and ready to bind off. I got lazy and decided to make them short.

First, knit/rib across the first sock, this leaves it in better position to bind off without having to stop the bind off mid-sock to move to the other one. One sock will have 1/2 row more stitches than the other, but I promise it won't be noticeable.


Here I am introducing a 3rd needle. I'm using a size bigger to do the bind off because I tend to bind off tightly. There are also a few other types of bind offs that are stretchier, I recently tried the sewn bind off from Knitty.com and I like that one too. For these socks I used a regular bind off though.


I bound off in pattern, my socks were a k3p3 rib so I knit 2, pass first stitch over second, k1, pass, p1, pass, etc. If the stitch below is a purl stitch, I purled. Same for knit stitches. That makes the bind off look more even.

half of one sock is bound off. See that needle 1 only has one sock on it? When you get to the end of the needle, just turn the work and continue working on the other side of the sock. This is why you start the bind off on the second sock. see photo below:


Continue the bind off all the way around. When finished, cut the yarn with a 8" tail and pull the last loop straight through. Do not pull the yarn thru the last stitch, just pull the last stitch all the way out. Then thread it on a needle, pass it under the loops of the first bound off stitch and then back through where it came from, making it look like another stitch. This makes the bind off even all the way around. Weave in ends, I even tie a tiny knot just to be safe but you don't have to if you have sensitive feet because you might feel it.

Now you will have one sock left on the needles. Repeat the bind off and finishing the same way.

Tada!! They're done, they're comfy and they were EASY!!




Don't mind my dog in the photo--that's pretty much her normal position 20 hours a day :-)

If you have any questions, please let me know. Again, please send me photos of your finished socks and I'll post them here for everyone to see how wonderful they are. I hope this tutorial was helpful to you! Happy knitting!







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