Stitch 'n Bitch: The Knitter's Handbook by Debbie Stoller

closer to the tip of the needle.

     
     
Bound for Glory
How to Bind Off Your Work
    There’s one last thing you need to know, and that’s how to get the darn thing off the needles when you’re done. Otherwise, you’d be walking around with a scarf that had a big pointed stick at one end. Okay, maybe you’d like to rock a stick-in-the-mud look this season, but it’s still a good idea to know how to get those stitches off the needle and how to secure them so they don’t unravel. It’s called binding off, and it’s easy. Really. Here’s how:
    1 Starting at the beginning of a row, knit a stitch. Let’s call it Sally. Knit another stitch and call it Harry.

     
    2 Slide the tip of the left needle under Sally’s front leg (the first stitch you knit).

     
    3 Then let Sally play leapfrog with Harry (the second stitch), by lifting Sally up and over Harry and then letting her drop off the tip of the right needle.

     
    4 Only Harry is left on the right needle.

     
    5 Repeat steps 2 and 3 over and over again, knitting a stitch, then leapfrogging the previous stitch over it, until all of your stitches have been bound off, and you’re left with only one stitch. Cut the yarn about 6 inches from the end and pull it through that last stitch, tightening gently.

     
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    O UT WITH THE O LD : H OW TO S TART A N EW B ALL
     
    You can knit for a good long time with one ball of yarn, but eventually you’ll run out. The best place to start a new ball of yarn is at the beginning of a row, so you don’t have a big ol’ ugly knot right in the middle of your scarf. How do you know if you have enough yarn left to finish a row? If you have about three times the width of your piece remaining, go ahead and knit the row. If you don’t, get ready to start a new ball.
    Cut the old yarn, leaving about a 6-inch-long tail. Hold this tail and the beginning 6 inches of the new yarn together with your left hand. Now just start knitting with the yarn. Don’t worry that the very first stitch is a little loose, you can fix that later. (figure 1) Knit about 6 stitches, stop, and tie the ends of the yarns together in a nice, neat little square knot. Later when it’s time to work away the ends, you can untie that knot. (figure 2)

     

     
    Another way to secure that new yarn is to knit the first one or two stitches using the old and new yarn together. This method only works well if you aren’t using yarn that is very bulky, and you should be careful, on the next row, to knit the two yarns together as one stitch, and not two.
    Finally, there’s the cheater’s way out: Make a slip knot in the new yarn, pass the old yarn through it, and slide the new yarn up to the base of the first stitch, then knit away. This can make for a sloppy beginning of a row, but try it, you might like it. (figure 3)

     
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Color My World
Learning to Make Stripes
    Okay, so you know how to add a new ball of yarn when you’re knitting. Now what if that new ball is a different color? Know what you’d have then? Stripes, my friend. And stripes are one of the easiest ways to make your knitting colorful and more fun. Add stripes by ending the old yarn, starting the next color of yarn, knitting for a few rows until your stripe is as wide as you want it to be, then adding the next color. Of course, you will always want to start your stripes at the
beginning
of a row. (Because you’ve been paying attention and you’d never dare add new yarn in the middle of a row, right?)
    If your stripes are only a few rows wide, you’ll get pretty tired of starting new yarn over and over again. Instead, just let the yarn you aren’t using hang along the side of your piece. Then, every time you get to the side where this yarn is hanging, just twist it once with the yarn you are using to knit. When you are ready for it, start knitting with the other yarn again.

     
The End of the Line
How to Weave in Yarn Ends
    When you’ve finished knitting a piece of fabric, you’ll have a couple of