Knitted Cast On

Hi, I'm Jen Lucas for The Knitting Circle. In this video, I'm going to show you how to work the knitted cast on. This particular cast on is perfect for beginners because you're basically working the first half of a knit stitch, and then also casting on your stitches. So it's a great cast on to know. Let's go ahead and get started on the knitted cast on.

The knitted cast on is worked by starting some knit stitches and then adding them to your left-hand needle in order to cast on and add stitches. Here I have a couple of swatches just to show you how it looks. Here I have the knitted cast on in garter stitch, and then here is the knitted cast on when you're doing stockinette stitch. So this cast on's a little bit more firm, and it's really great when you need to cast on stitches in the middle of a row, or at the end of a row or something, in some more advanced knitting patterns. It's a really great one to know.

So to start, we're just going to leave about six to eight inches of tail to weave in at the end of your project. And we're going to start by making a slipknot. So we're going to cross the yarn over like this, fold it down over the tail, and then we'll pull that tail through to make our slipknot. And then we can just tighten that down a little bit. So this slip knot's going to go on our left-hand needle, and then to cast on, we are going to use our working yarn, and we are going to go ahead and insert the needle from front to back like this, wrap the yarn around, and pull that loop through like we're creating a knit stitch.

Normally, if we're creating a knit stitch then we would take this stitch off the left-hand needle. We're going to leave it on there. We're going to pull and come around, and then stick this stitch onto the left-hand needle. And that has now cast on another stitch. So again, we're going to insert the needle from front to back as if we're going to knit, wrap the yarn around, pull the loop through, we're going to pull it, bring around, come through like this, and tighten it down, Now we've cast on another stitch.

So you can see you're basically creating a knit stitch, which is why it's called the knitted cast on to cast on your stitches. Again, insert the needle, wrap the yarn around to knit, bring the loop through, and we're going to bring it around and come through the stitch this way to create our stitch. I'll do a few more for you. It's very easy and what's great about this one is you don't have to estimate how long your tail needs to be like you do with the long tail cast on. You can just leave enough of a tail that you can weave in later, and just start your cast on.

And there you go. And that's it. As you can see, it's a very easy cast on. It's a great one to use when you need to cast on stitches in the middle of a row. And it's also a great cast on for beginners.

You don't have to worry about how long your tail is like you do in the long tail cast on. This is the first cast on I learned and I love using it. And I hope you do too. I'm Jen Lucas for The Knitting Circle. And I'll see you back here again real soon.