Going Up a Needle Size to Bind Off

Hi, everyone. I'm Jen Lucas from The Knitting Circle. In knitting, a common problem is that you finish a project and then you go to bind off and you bind off a little bit too tight. This can be especially problematic if that edge where you bound off is going to be the neck hole of a sweater or the top of a sock where you're going to need a little more stretch. There are so many different bind offs that you can use, but if you like to use a standard knit-wise bind off, you can also just go up a couple of needle sizes when you're binding off to give your bind off a little bit more stretch. I'd love to show you how to do it. So let's get started. Let's talk about an easy way that you can create a loose bind off. There are so many different ways to bind off and there's many different loose bind offs that you can try. But if you like to do just a standard traditional knit wise bind off, but you're finding that it's a little too tight, this might be an easy solution for you. So here I have a swatch that I have worked on size seven, 4.5 millimeter, knitting needles and I'm just using double points here for my swatch. So to bind off, if I want to have a looser bind off, I'm actually going to take my free needle, set it aside, and I'm going to just bring in a larger needle. Now here I have a metal needle and a wood needle so you can really see the difference that I'm using definitely a different needle, but it doesn't really matter the type of needle, whether it's wood or metal, just you want to have a needle that's larger for your free needle. Here I have gone up two needle sizes so I'm using a U. S. size nine or 5.5 millimeter knitting needle. Now you might find that going up two sizes is not enough for you. Maybe you need to go up three sizes, or some people even four sizes, in order to get that loose bind off, but you don't want to go up so large that then your bind off is looking super loose and loopy. Then you might want to try actually a different type of bind off for your project, but if you just find out... find that that bind off's just a little bit too tight for you, going up two to three needles sizes should help you. So I'm going to take my free needle, which is two sizes larger, and now I'm just going to bind off. So I'm just working a standard bind off by knitting one stitch, knitting a second stitch, and passing the first stitch over the second stitch. But by using that larger needle in my right hand to wrap the yarn around and create the stitches, that's making a little more yarn go into these stitches and therefore a little more yarn going into my bind off and therefore making my bind off a little bit more loose. So we're just knitting one and then passing the first stitch over the second stitch, and again, just by doing that with that larger needle, we're creating a looser bind off. Isn't that easy? We just go up a couple of needle sizes while we're binding off and we create a little bit more stretch to that tight bind off. It's the perfect solution if the knit wise bind off is your favorite bind off. Thanks so much for watching me here at The Knitting Circle. I hope that you'll take a look around our website and check out all our other great videos. We have lots of tips and techniques to try.