Finishing moves

After kicking around some ideas and doing some exploring, I decided that the best way to bind off for the market bag was to use Elizabeth Zimmerman's sewn bind off. With 116 total stitches, it was tedious but appears to be effective.

After 49 stitches I broke the yarn and slipped the next nine onto a stitch holder. Since I was wondering how I'd connect the yarn without having the strand hanging down, I decided to do the sewn bind off through the stitches on the holder but not remove them from it (obviously). I bound off a few more and then reconnected the yarn.

Everything seemed to be going well until I got near the end. As you see above, there's a gap after the beginning/end of the round followed by what looks like an extra stitch or inadvertent yarn over. I'm not sure what the best way is to deal with it. I think it's too far away to treat it like something that could be knit together with the true last stitch. If I drop it from the needle, it'll just be hanging out there waiting to get snagged on something.

I'm thinking that my only solution is to drop it and figure out some way to weave the end over it and then in. Yes? No? Any clue what I did?

As for the handle, I think I'm going to try the linen stitch. It sounds like it won't stretch as much. Since I'm not planning on slinging this around my shoulder, that's a desirable handle quality.

I'll be returning to knitting flat, so the right side/wrong side business is important. Correct me if I'm wrong, but my first row will be a right side row, won't it?

I should point out that the picture at the top of this post is the right side. The garter stitch "border" came when I joined the new color and did the first row of garter stitch in the round by purling. That's what the directions said to do, although the directions were for something the same color. I don't know that it's a "mistake"--it looks OK--but I've since realized that I probably would have been fine if I'd knit the first row and purled the next.