How to Make a Slip Knot

Hi everyone, I'm Jen Lucas for The Knitting Circle. In this video, I'm gonna show you how to make a simple slip knot. Making a slip knot is the first step in casting on your stitches, for the vast majority of knitting projects. Once you've made this slip knot, that's going to count as your first stitch, and you're ready to cast on the rest of your stitches, and get knitting. So, let's get started on how to make a slip knot. Making a slip knot is traditionally the first step of starting your knitting project. So, when you're casting on, your cast on might say, let's just say cast on 10 stitches, well you're going to make a slip knot, and then that's going to be your first stitch. So, I just want to go over how to make the slip knot, in case you haven't done it before. So, we're going to start with the length of yarn. You're gonna wanna leave maybe six to eight inches of a tail, so that you can weave that in later, and so we're going to start by making a loop like this, sort of, horse shoe shape. We're going to cross the yarn over, like this, we're then going to fold the loop down on to the tail, and then we can pull this up, and put it onto our knitting needle. We just tighten it down, and that is our slip knot. I'm going to go ahead and show you that again. So, we're going to take our yarn, leaving a tail. We're going to make a shape like this. We're going to fold it over, so that these two yarns have crossed. We then can fold our loop down over the tail here, and then you can see, it kind of looks a little bit like a pretzel, or something, but then we're going to take our needle and go under this tail here, just like this, and then we can pull it up, and then tighten it down, and then that would be our first stitch, and then whatever cast on you're using, whether that's a long tail cast on, knitted cast on, you would just continue adding your stitches. Let me just show you that one more time in case, in case it's still not clear. We've got our yarn going around like this, cross it over, fold it down over the tail, take our needle, and we're going to go over this strand, and under this strand, and over this strand, like this, and then we can just bring it up, and tighten it. With a little practice, this becomes second nature, you won't even have to think, but that's the slip knot, and that again, traditionally, will be your first stitch of your cast on. See how easy that is? Slip knots are really no big deal, and now you're ready to cast on the rest of your stitches, and work the rest of your knitting project. I'm Jen Lucas for The Knitting Circle. I hope that you'll stick around, and check out all the other great content on our website. I'll see you back here again real soon.