Day 3: Casting On

Hi, everyone. I'm Jen Lucas and this is our 14-day Learn to Knit series here at The Knitting Circle. In this lesson, I'm gonna show you how to cast on your knitting. I'm gonna show you two different cast ons, the knitted cast on the longtail cast on, either one will work for starting your first knitting project. Let's take a look. Let's talk about casting on our knitting. So to get started with our knitting, we need to add stitches to our knitting needle in order to knit, and that's called casting on. In this video, I'm gonna show you two different ways to cast on, the knitted cast on and the long tail cast on. So let's start with the knitted cast on, this is what I have here, I have two swatches. This is the garter stitch, where I've knit all of the stitches on every row, and my cast on is right down here. And then here I have the stockinette stitch, where I've knit on the right side and purled on the wrong side and my cast on is down here. This cast ons very easy to do. And I also really like it because you're actually starting by creating a knit stitch. And so you're basically learning how to do part of a knit stitch when you're doing this cast on. This was the first cast on I learned and I used it for years before I learned anything else. So let's go ahead and take a look at how to do this. I'm gonna go ahead and use some double pointed needles here to cast on. Only because that way, I'm not then banging the table or anything with a longer knitting needle. But you might have your single point knitting needles, or you might even have a fixed circular needle like this one here. Whatever needle you have is fine for casting on, I'm just gonna go ahead and use the double points. So first, we're gonna take our yarn, and we're just gonna wanna leave a little bit of a tail. And you're gonna want your tail to be around six to eight inches long. I don't really measure this with a tape measure or anything, just I sort of eyeball it. You wanna leave a long enough tail so that when we're done with our project, we can put this yarn onto a yarn or tapestry needle and weave in the end. So if it's really short, it's gonna be very difficult to weave in the end. So we wanna make sure we're leaving it a little bit long, so we have enough yarn to work with. So we're gonna start by making a slip knot. So to make a slip knot, what I like to do is sort of make my upside down U shape here. I'm gonna cross the yarn over like this. So the yarn on top is going to, I just have a tiny ball of yarn here, but you'll have it going to your ball of yarn. We're then gonna take this loop and fold it over just like that, we almost kind of have like a little bit of a pretzel here. And then we have this loop of yarn here, we can go ahead and go over, under, over, just like that. And then pull everything tight to make our slipknot. And However, if you already know how to make a slip knot, however you make a slip knot is just fine. So we have the slip knot, this slip knot counts as our first stitch. So now I'm gonna show you how to do the knitted cast on when you're using the English or throwing method. And what I mean by that, is the yarn is gonna be in my right hand as I cast on. And so we need to put a little bit of tension on yarn. And this is something that you may find yourself experimenting with, over time, finding the right way to hold the yarn that feels comfortable to you. So you can come around on your pinky, come up onto your forefinger whatever works. So we're going to go into the stitch and we're gonna go in from left to right, just like this. So I'm gonna pull that back out and do that again. We're gonna go from left to right into the stitch. I'm gonna take the yarn, I'm gonna wrap it around from back to front. And then we're gonna pull that loop through. So this is sort of the tricky part. We're going to bring it down and bring it through that hole. And now we've actually created a stitch. So to cast on, we're gonna take this stitch and we need to get it onto this other needle. So I come around in scoop down in front of that stitch and through, and then you can pull that right needle out. And we've cast on a stitch, so now we have two stitches. So then we're gonna just always be working in the stitch that's closest to the end of the needle. We're gonna insert our right needle from right to left. So we're going into that stitch. We're gonna wrap the yarn around, and then we're gonna pull that loop through. Just take your time, you can see I kinda come down and under that left needle to pull through the yarn, we're gonna bring it like this, scoop the left needle down and into the stitch and then you just tug it a little bit, you don't wanna pull too tight, but you do wanna give it a little bit of a tug to cast on the next stitch. So again, into the stitch, around, pull it through, bring the needle points together, and scoop with the left needle and get that stitch on to the left needle. And there you go, you're doing the knitted cast on. Insert the needle, wrap the yarn around, pull it through, bring the needles together and scoop with the left needle, the stitch on to the left needle. And so you would just keep continuing this process until you had the number of stitches that you needed for your project. If you're just starting a swatch to practice on, for this series, you probably wanna put 20 to 25 stitches onto your needle. So there we go. Now we are doing the knitted cast on and again, that's the English method or throwing method with the yarn in my right hand. But now I'd like to show you how to do it with the yarn in my left hand. So I'm actually just gonna pull this out and we'll just start over again. So we're still gonna have to make that slip knot. So we're gonna fold it down and fold over, under over and pull. Here we go, we're still gonna keep this needle with the slip knot on it in our left hand. And this will still count as a stitch. But now we're gonna hold the yarn in our left hand and do this continental style. And so same thing, you're just going to wanna find the right way to tension the yarn for you. So again, I like to go under the pinky of the yarn, go over my pinky and then I like to actually wrap the yarn around my finger like this when I'm working with the yarn in my left hand. And so now we're gonna cast on, it's the same exact movements, we just have the yarn in the other hand. So we're gonna insert our needle from left to right, we're gonna wrap the yarn around, and you can see the yarn's already almost right there. So we're just gonna wrap it around, we're gonna pull that loop through, bring the needles together, scoop the stitch onto the left needle, tug it down, and we have two stitches. And so we're just gonna keep repeating that process again. We're gonna insert the needle, wrap the yarn around, hold the loop through, bring the needles together, and then scoop that left needle just like that. Again, and you can see here, and I'm bringing in yarn around this way, pulling it through and on to the left needle. And so that's the knitted cast on it. And it's called the knitted cast on, because we're basically knitting the stitches on to the needle, we're doing all the motions of the knit stitch, we're just putting that stitch on to the left needle. And so I think that this is a great one to learn, because now you've already basically learned how to do a knit stitch by doing this cast on. So I'm gonna go ahead and do this one a couple more times for you. With the yarn in my left hand continental style, wrap it around, pull it through, bring them together, and loop it around. Insert, wrap around, pull that loop through, and just take your time with it. When you're first starting out, you're gonna drop stitches, you're gonna do it wrong, your stitches might be going the wrong way. But you can always come back to this video and practice it. But this is a really great cast on to use. If this is the only cast on that you ever learned, that's just fine, you are ready to start knitting. But I would like to also show you how to do the long tail cast on. We're gonna work the long tail cast on by first making, you guessed it, a long tail. So I have my little ball of yarn here. And what you want to do is leave yourself a long enough tail that we can cast on, plus leave yourself a good six to eight inches so you can weave that end in later. And now as you start knitting, you may be able to sort of eyeball this, how much yarn you're going to need, but I actually like to estimate it. So I start by leaving myself a good six to eight inch tail. And again, I'm just gonna use the double point needle here, but you would use whatever needle that you're using for your project. I'm going to just pinch the yarn here leaving my tail, and I'm gonna wrap the yarn around 10 times. So we have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine and 10. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. So I have my 10 little wraps, I'm gonna hold on to the yarn and unwrap it, and so I'm estimating that this is how much tail I need for 10 stitches. And I usually like to then give myself a little bit extra two just to be safe. You don't wanna run out of tail for your long tail cast on, especially if you're gonna use this cast on for something like a sweater, a bottom up sweater or bottom up shawl, you may have to cast on hundreds of stitches for that depending on the yarn weight or things like that. So you wanna make sure you have enough yarn. But anyway, if I'm calling this 10 stitches, then if I needed to cast on, say 40 stitches, I could just sort of do 20 and just keep folding it over 30, 40 and say okay that's my tail. And then I need to start here to cast on 40 stitches. But we're just gonna do the 10. So I'm just gonna come back here, pinch my yarn, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. And this is the tail that I'm gonna need for my cast on. So we're going to make our slip knot right here. So I'm gonna fold the yarn over and fold it again, grab my needle, go over, under over and get that slip knot on to my needle. Now I'm gonna hold this needle in my right hand. And this doesn't matter if you're going to ultimately end up knitting English style with the yarn in your right hand or continental style with the yarn in your left hand. For this cast on, it's the same either way, we're gonna hold the yarn and we're gonna hold the needle in our right hand. So I like to just sort of use my forefinger to hold down that slip knot when I'm getting started. We're gonna want our long tail to be coming to the front sort of towards us, and our working yarn that's going to the ball of yarn to be sort of a way or going behind. Now, I'm gonna take on my left hand, my forefinger and thumb, I'm gonna go in between the two here, right in between, and then open it up like this, I'm gonna hold the yarn with my hand and pull down. So again, my tails coming to the front, yarn's going to the ball to the back, I'm gonna bring my forefinger and thumb in between, then just kind of grab the working yarn with my fingers and everything and then I'm gonna pull the forefinger and thumb apart and bring it down like this. So I've made a V. And you can see here how the yarns coming on my thumb and around my forefinger. And so now we can start doing our long tail cast on. We're gonna bring our right needle under and through this loop on my thumb, and then around this strand on my forefinger. I'm gonna bring the yarn through the loop on my thumb, and then drop the loop on my thumb and pull down to create a stitch. So there I've created a second stitch. And the slip knot counts as the first stitch for this cast on as well. So again, going in between those two yards, opening my forefinger and thumb, pulling the yarn down to make a V. I'm coming under and through on my thumb, going over and around on my forefinger and then bringing the loop through, bringing the strand through the loop on my thumb, dropping the loop on my thumb, and then using my thumb to pull that tight. And that's a third stitch. And so you just keep repeating this, we're gonna go under and through, around through the loop and off, Under, around, through the loop and off. So you would just keep working in this manner, but you can see why you need to have the long tail, the tail is on my thumb and so we are working that tail into our cast on. So we have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, so we need three more. Three, two, and one. So we should have 10 stitches there. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. And we do. So there, now we're ready to start our project. So you can see I still have a pretty lengthy tail here. Well, that's great. Better to have a tail that's a little too long than a little too short. And so that's the long tail cast on. And so let's see here we have these swatches here, which I've used the long tail cast on. So this is stockinette stitch where I've knit on the right side purled on the wrong side. And this is garter stitch where I'm knitting on both the right and the wrong side. So if we just take a look at the garter stitch, where we're just doing the knit stitches here, you can see this is my cast on using that knitted cast on that we did first. And then this is my cast on using the long tail cast on. So they do look different. Like I said, either one's perfectly valid, and I did the knitted cast on for a very long time before I learned anything else. But whichever one you choose, now you know how to cast on your knitting and we're ready to learn the knit stitch. There you go, that's how you cast on. Now that you know how to cast on, we're ready to start knitting. In the next lesson, I'll cover how to work the knit stitch. I'll see you there.