I’m pretty sure the first person to ever clue me in on this one was my pal Meg Strong. A lot of times there will be an edge of your knitting that’s exposed — say, the long sides of a scarf or the edge of a button band (when knit integrally or vertically). Or, as pictured above, the armhole edges of the superbulky sleeveless turtleneck I’m working on, which are especially prominent at this scale. If you work the edge stitches normally — for instance, in stockinette — you wind up with a bump on the edge of your knitting at each row. Sometimes it looks fine, like if it’s garter stitch ridges at the edges of the work anyway. But often it’s nicer to have that edge look smoother and more finished. Current patterns will often specify how to work edge stitches when they’re meant to be picked up or seamed together (e.g., stockinette selvage or twisted stitch selvage, or whatever the case may be), but it’s less often noted what to do when the edge will not be disappearing into a seam. For the cleanest finish on a visible selvage, all you need to do is slip the first stitch on each row with the yarn held in front, work to the opposite edge of the fabric as written, and then knit the last stitch. So on the right side, the first stitch gets slipped wyif. When you come back to that slipped stitch at the left edge of the wrong side, you knit it. Same thing on the wrong side: slip the first stitch wyif, work to the other end, knit the last stitch.
Try it on a swatch — knit a few rows in plain stockinette and then a few rows with the edge stitches slipped — and you’ll see what a difference such a simple thing can make.
[UPDATE: The sweater pictured has since been released as a free tutorial-pattern called Sloper]
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PREVIOUSLY in Hot Tips: Off-center your buttons