Knitting is about Learning From Mistakes

Even after 20 years of knitting, I am still making mistakes and learning from them. Making mistakes can be frustrating since it usually means re-knitting, but I am constantly amazed by how much I learn from these mistakes and the way it makes me understand the knitting process so much better than I would if I was just blindly following pattern instructions.

Remember how I mentioned in my previous post that I was unhappy with the look of the knit 2 together stretchy bind-off I was using for the first time on my son's socks? Well, guess what -- I was not executing it properly! I over thought the instructions, as I often do, and instead of simply knitting stitches and then knitting them together through the back as instructed, I thought I had to follow the rib pattern and knit some stitches while purling the others. Fortunately, when I began to bind off the second sock, I forgot to over think it and simply followed the instructions. I noticed how it was looking nice and wondered why it was different from the first sock. That is when I realized my bone-headed move the first time around. So, you guessed it, I ripped out the bind-off on the first sock and re-knit. I am so happy with the result. The photos below illustrate the differences:

Here is a picture of both socks with nice and neat bind-offs after having properly executed the knit 2 together stretchier bind-off:

And the finished object photo of the day:

I am happy with the finished result (and so is my son), but just for fun, I think I will try another stretchy bind-off on my daughter's socks when I finish them; it is called Jenny's Surprisingly Stretchy Bind-Off.  I learned about it when searching You-Tube videos for Cat Bordhi tutorials (they are instructional and entertaining); Cat has a great one demonstrating Jenny's bind-off technique and seems very enthusiastic about it while demonstrating it.

Please let me know in the comments which bind-off technique you use when knitting socks from the toe-up.