Link: Knitting
Smooth rib-to-stockinette transition
Why: purl bumps stack vertically in ribbing (so they recede/hide), but at the transition to stockinette the purl bumps from the last rib row have nothing above them to hide behind, so they stick out - causing a bulge (pullover) or an outright flip (open cardigan).
Fix - on the last WS row of your ribbing, elongate the knit stitches by slipping some stitches purlwise:
- Flat: work first and last stitch of the row, slip all the other purl stitches with yarn in front (float carries across the WS). Bring yarn snugly across the front of the slipped stitches when moving to knit the knits.
- In the round: slip the knits with yarn in back, bringing yarn snugly across the back of the slipped stitches, then purl the purls. Bonus: this tightened float also acts like a girdle, helping ribbing keep its shape in yarn with little memory.
Source: Patty Lyon’s Knitting Bag of Tricks, p162-163 “Ribbed Border: Fix the Flip”
The perfect neck opening (gap, dip, and hole)
Three problems happen where you bind off the center front/back neck stitches and split to two balls of yarn:
- Gap: binding off mid-row breaks the yarn’s flow between the two columns of stitches (worse once you add a new ball).
- Dip: bind-off pulls in at the start of the bind-off because a stitch lying on its side doesn’t reach as far as it’s tall.
- Hole: same pulling-in effect, but at the end of the bind-off.
Fix, worked as you reach the neck bind-off point:
- Work to the bind-off position, then work an LLI increase (a lifted increase).
- Add your new ball of yarn and knit the next stitch, then pass the increased stitch (from step 1) over this new stitch. This doesn’t count as a bound-off stitch - you added a stitch and are simply removing it, which connects the two yarn columns (fixes the gap).
- Begin the real bind-off: you’ve already knit one stitch, so knit the next and pass over, repeating until you’re one stitch short of the full bind-off count (fixes the dip, since the extra connecting stitch already used up the “shortfall”).
- Instead of binding off that final stitch normally, work a modified SSK: slip the next unworked stitch as if to knit, insert the left needle through the front loops of the slipped stitch and the last worked stitch, and knit them together (fixes the hole).
Pair this with the sloped bind-off for the neck shoulders that follow, for a neck with no gaps, dips, or holes.
Source: Patty Lyon’s Knitting Bag of Tricks, p167-169 “The Perfect Neck Opening”