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What’s Your Favorite Way to Cast on?

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I’ve learned a lot of different cast on methods through the years, and taught a lot of them, too, whether in person or online.

My absolute favorite to teach new knitters is the knit cast on because once you know how to cast on you basically know how to knit, too. And because of that it’s also pretty easy for people to remember how to do it when their teacher is gone or if they stopped knitting for a while and are picking it back up again.

When it comes to my own knitting, thought, I’d say more than 90 percent of the time I use the long-tail cast on. It’s easy and fast once you get the hang of it, and the most efficient way I know of to cast on a whole lot of stitches at once.

But it’s not always the best cast on method or even one that you can use. You can’t use a long tail cast on in the middle of a row (or even the middle of a project) for example.

I’ve collected some of my favorite cast on methods and the pros and cons of using them over on Our Daily Craft. This post is a quick summary of six different cast on methods and when to use them, but within the post there are links to tutorials for how to work each of them, if any of them happen to be new to you.

I’m sure I’ll keep adding to this collection (it needs provisional cast on for sure, I just don’t have a tutorial for that yet) but if you know these six methods that will get you through a lot of different knitting situations.

So how about you? What’s your favorite cast on method? Or what do you use most often even if it’s not your favorite?

How to Fix a Dropped Cast On Stitch

A Cheat Sheet for Cast Ons

How to Make a Knit Cast On

Learn to Knit: Cable Cast On

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Comments

  1. My favorite provisional cast on is the COWYAK cast on from TECHknitting. It takes a bit more time, but you get nice even live stitches when it’s removed.

Have you read?

Knit a Stunning Bestiary Scarf

I don’t even know what to say about this amazing knitting pattern. The Bestiary Scarf from Monstra & Mirabilia is so full of details it’s a little intimidating to talk about. 

It features, as the designer describes it, an “artistic encyclopaedia of Western mythical creatures.”

The pattern includes a dragon, harpy, Medusa, chimaera, centauress, phoneix, kraken, mermaid, sew serpent, cyclops, wyvern, Pegasus, amphiptere and amphibaena. (It’s a good thing there’s a photo of the proejct with everything labelled because I definitely didn’t know the names for everything.) It’s also designed like a landscape, with water and land creatures toward the bottom ends and sky creatures toward the top. 

The dragon is at the center and is worked sideways so it will show as upright when you wear it. 

The scarf is worked in double knitting, so the colorwork appears in the opposite colors on the other side. 

It’s worked in light fingering weight yarn (on size 0 US or 2mm knitting needles) and the colorwork is shown in charts. The pattern also includes some video tutorials and written instructions to help you along. The designer says the pattern is for intermediate knitters, and “advanced beginners may succeed with patience and the help of the video tutorials.”

When I was an advanced beginner this kind of a pattern would have brought me to tears, but if you love a challenge, and a project that you’ll wear and get tons of astonished reactions every time, this is the project for you. And of course if you have a few double knitting projects under your belt and are comfortable reading charts, this project shouldn’t be hard, but that doesn’t mean it’s fast. But lots of great things take time, and that’s never stopped us before, right? 

You can get a copy of this pattern from Monstra & Mirabilia on Ravelry. 

[Photo: Monstra & Mirabilia ]