How to work a Picot Bind Off

I love a picot bind off on a shawl! The little picot-bumps along the edge add an extra dose of lacy prettiness, and it's also a nice and stretchy method, which makes it perfect to use with lace. Two of my shawl designs call for a picot bind off: Budburst and Liquid Honey.

Budburst (pattern available on Ravelry)

Liquid Honey (free pattern available at Knitty.com)

The picots are created by casting on a few extra stitches, and then binding off normally to the place you want your next picot to be. Casting on more stitches creates a larger picot, and binding off more stitches spaces them further apart.

I made a short one-minute video showing the method I used for my Budburst shawl, casting on 2 extra stitches, then binding off 5 for each picot:

The picot bind off does take longer than a plain bind off (because of all the extra cast on stitches), but it's not difficult - as long as you keep counting! My favourite tip for counting bind-off stitches is to count each stitch you lift over.

Another brilliant thing about a picot bind off is that when you come to block your shawl, you can thread your blocking wires through each picot - which is much quicker and easier than catching each stitch beneath a plain bind off. Like so:

Blocking wires are seriously the best. :)