Irregular Webcomic! #1438

In knitting, you begin by casting on, or adding new stitches to the knitting needles, from whence you add more rows of stitches to the existing stitches to produce your knitted garment. When you have produced enough knitting to make the required size, you cast off the stitches to remove them from the needles and tie them up so that they don't unravel.

Interestingly, casting off is known as "binding off" in the USA, a fact that I was completely unaware of until I did the research to write this annotation. By which time it was too late to realistically consider either scrapping this joke entirely or modifying it in some odd way. So if you're an American knitter and didn't quite get this joke, sorry.

I've received several dozen comments from American knitters (who knew so many read my comic!) that they've never heard of "binding off" and that they know this process only as "casting off". I guess that "binding off" is very regionally localised within parts of the US, although it's odd that my research didn't indicate that and implied that "binding off" was used universally within the US. The things you learn!

2016-08-22 Rerun commentary: It does seem odd then that the Wikipedia page for casting off is titled "Binding off", and that over the past 10 years nobody has raised the point on the talk page that most people refer to it as "casting off". Seems like a job for a Wikipedia editor to fix.

The "sleeve" by the way, is actually a tiny piece of a CHUX® Superwipe® that I repurposed from the kitchen. It made a pretty ideal knitted sleeve, I must say. Yet another thing you can use the versatile CHUX® Superwipe® for!

Note to CHUX®: Email me for the delivery address of my free case of Superwipes®.