binding off

OK, so you’ve gotten to where you want in your piece, and you’re ready to bind off.  Here’s how my grandma taught me to do it.

Holding your full needle in your left hand, knit the first two stitches as usual:

Here’s the tricky part.  Now you need to insert your left needle under the first knit stitch you made, as so:

Use your left needle to pull this stitch up and over the second knit stitch and off the needle:

Now you have 1 stitch on the right needle again.  Knit another stitch so you have 2:

Use your left needle as before and lift the farthest stitch on the right needle up and over the other stitch, and off the needle so you have one stitch again:

Knit another stitch:

Using your left needle, do what you just did — lift the farthest stitch on the right needle up and over the closest, and off the hook:

OK I’m sure you get it now.  Keep going until you’ve got no more stitches on your left needle:

Almost done!  Here’s where you cut/break your working yarn, leaving a tail so you can sew it in later.  Using your hook, pull up so that your last loop is huge:

Remove the needle and put your fingers through, like so:

Pull your end through the loop and pull tight:

You’re done!

Now you can weave in your ends as you choose.

Note:  Sometimes you might want to bind of with purl stitches, but the principle is the same.  Purl two, slip one over, purl one, slip one over, purl one, etc…  And sometimes patterns call for you to bind off following a pattern of mixed knit and purl stitches.  If you try it you’ll see that it does make a difference!