Bind off WAAY too tight, help!

[Kilgore_Trout]

Hi! I've been knitting for a couple of months now, and until recently have only made scarves. I always noticed my bind off being extremely tight, so tight its hard to even continue after a few stitches. The scarves turned out ok, their flexibility hiding the tight BO, but now I'm trying to make wrist warmers. After much toiling with knitting in the round I ended up with a great piece thats unforunately unusable because of the tight BO. I can't get my fingers through! My bind off method is the simplist basic knit BO, should it be so hard? Thanks!

[KellyK]

I did the same thing with the first baby bootie I made....it's kind of a "live and learn" thing, I guess....

The suggestion I received was to use a bigger needle to bind off. Works well!

[Julie]

I also read to use a bigger needle....I actually use a big crochet hook to BO and it works great.

[brendajos]

when i stick my needle in the second stitch i usually give my needles a little pull so that the loop is a little bigger than usual, then i knit it. makes it looser on the right hand needle before you slip the other one over top of it.

also i learned an easy method on this site... http://www.fiberartshop.com/knclbg.htm ...about 3 min and 30 seconds into the cast off video. might want to give that a try too.

[Kilgore_Trout]

Thanks a lot! I ended up using two needles since I didn't have anything bigger. It worked out great, and through it I realized what I was doing too tight and was able to drop the second needle after 10 or 15 stitches. Thanks ladies, no more BO blues!
N

[KellyK]

[HeatherFeather]

in my blog, I explain a new bind off method!!!

basically, Knit 2
(you have 2 stitches on the right needle)
Insert left needle in front, and knit those two stitches together,
K 1, and insert left needle as before, and continue.