back to the neckline problems

This just in: Look at the lovely roses from an old friend (that my sweet Baboo just emailed me):


If that doesn't just scream springiness, I dunno what does... They make me smile so much, I can almost forget the knitterly doldrums I feel.

So, I am almost finished w/ my critter knit, I have yet to tackle the weaving in of all those ends, and my Salt Peanut yarn is not yet in.

bleaugh.

I want to start a summer vest! I want to cast on the Eyelet Cardi Redux! I want more yarn and more patterns! I get really antsy at the end of a project/season, always.

My plan, and goal... is to fight the "flight of fancy" instinct. I really need to finish the binkie and the wee's sweater before anything else. Really. One or the other will be done tonight and posted by morning.

On to necklines: If anyone has any words of wisdom about this, I would really dig them. Here's what I did with the sweater, and what went wrong:

A poster on the Knitter's Review forums responded to someone's question about picking up stitches by saying something to the effect of "if you haven't started to bind of the neck stitches, like it probably says to in the pattern, don't. (With my luck I am remembering this totally out of context...) She said to put the stitches that one would bind off on hold on a circ, so that fewer stitches would need to be picked up later.

But when I tried that, I ended up with larger than average holes at the "steps" (i.e., the 15 center stitches were fine, then the next row of "bind off 2" left a hole between the rows, as well as the next row where I bound off two more). The holes didn't seem so big at the last two bind off 1s...

(Yes, yes, I should have pictures here, if I expect helpful help... but my camera is not so great, and I really need to buy a couch first and a camera second so bear with me and use your imagination...)

My question: did the helpful poster likely just mean the 15 center stitches? Or did I interpret this advice correctly, it just that the holes were caused by the phenomenon of newer knitters whereby the last stitch is always sort of stretched--so my stitches (that would have been bound off) were a little looser resulting in holes?

Any thoughts on this are greatly appreciated!

P.S. My solution, which I know was not the best, was to darn the holes--They weren't that big and the recipient lives in Phoenix Arizona and will likely get only two chances to wear the thing before he outgrows it.