Last time we talked about using your pre-blocked gauge to keep your knitting on track. If you missed that article you can find it here.

We tend to encounter this when knitting cuff down socks, sleeve cuffs, or the bottom of a sweater when working bottom up, and when binding off. The edges tend to be too tight. This one is easy to solve and the way I learned to do it won’t require anything but your project needles. Since long tail cast on is my go to all purpose method, these tips relate to that technique.

Lots of times we don’t even think about our cast on or bind off as part of the gauge problem.

If your long tail cast on tends to be too tight, it’s most likely caused by bunching up the stitches while casting on. Instead space them out. Keep the stitches approximately 1/8” (3 mm) apart while casting on, try not to over-tighten the stitches. Leaving space between the stitches will increase the stitch gauge. This ensures the cast-on edge matches the pattern gauge and is stretchy when you need it.

Here’s the bonus.

If you are knitting socks, then you can increase the distance between stitches even more to get that cuff to go over your foot. I thought you had to increase the stitch count, but that’s not always necessary. This little change can be used with any method that uses two ends, like long tail, to cast on.

Now for that bind off.

There are lots of stretchy bind offs, but I don’t always like the look or the floofiness of them. I don’t always remember them either. This method is easy to learn and you probably already know the standard bind off (knit 2 stitches, pull the 1st one over the second, knit one more and do it again). I learned one little change that makes all the difference. I call this the modified standard bind off. You can read all about this one on my blog here.

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Let me know if you tried either of these tips for your knitting and how it worked out for you.