Long Tail Cast On

Hi, I'm Jen Lucas for the knitting circle. And in this video, I'm going to show you how to work the long tail cast on. This cast on is one of the most common ones found in knitting and you can use it for just about any knitting project. So let's go ahead and get started. The long tail cast on is just as it sounds. We're going to use a long tail to cast on our stitches. I have a couple swatches here that just show you how the long tail cast on looks in garter stitch and stack a net. So here I have the garter stitch and here's my cast on right down here. And then here I have the long tail cast on worked in stack a net. I really like how it looks here too. So to start, we're going to need a long tail. So this can be a little tricky because you need to approximate how long your tail needs to be in order to cast on. What I like to do to approximate my tail is I'm going to take my yarn and leave maybe six to eight inches of tail. I'm going to take my needle and I'm going to loosely wrap the yarn around 10 times. So that's 10. And then I'm going to just pull it off like this. So this would make approximately 10 stitches. So if you needed to cast on 40 stitches you would say, this is 10. This is 20. Just keep folding the yarn over like this. This can be especially useful if you are doing something like a bottom up sweater or bottom up shawl where you might even need to start with hundreds of stitches on the needle, um but this is a good way to approximate. I'm going to go ahead and just cast on 10. So I'm just going to use this length of yarn. So to start, we're going to need a slip knot and we're going to need a slip knot here leaving our long tail. So to make my slip knot I'm going to cross the yarn over like this, fold it over, pull the loop through To make my slip knot I'm going to stick that onto my right hand needle and just tighten it down a little bit. Now I have my long tail here and then my working yarn going to my ball of yarn in the back. I am going to make a V like this Oops I'm going to make a V so I have the tail on my thumb and the working yarn on my pointer index finger. And I'm going to pull it up like this to make a V To do the long tail cast on I'm going to go around through the loop on my thumb around on my index finger. And then I'm going to pull the yarn through this loop that I have on my thumb just like that. And pull it tight and that makes a stitch. So again, make the V the long tails on your thumb, pull it down. We're going to take the right hand needle go through the loop on our thumb, around the yarn on our index finger, and then down through the loop on our thumb. And pull, and there you go. We've made another stitch. Again, V pull down through the loop on the thumb around the index finger, through the hole and pull. I'm just going to keep working a few more Here we have eight. Through the hole around and through. Going around around and through. Here we have three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine 10. Here you can see, we have our 10 stitches on the needle and we have this perfect amount of tail left for weaving it. And there you go. So the long tail cast on creates a, a row of knitting. So your next row of your pattern is going to be typically the wrong side. Your particular knitting pattern will tell you which side you're going to be working on but typically the next row, after a long tail cast on is going to be a wrong side row. And that's it. It seems a little tricky at first, but with a little bit of practice, it's really not that hard. And that is the long tail cast on. And there you go. As you can see with your yarn and one needle you've cast on and you're ready to start your knitting project I'm Jen Lucas for the knitting circle. I hope that you enjoyed this video and I'll see you back here again real soon.