Tuesday Tip – Keeping Track of Cast On
Long tail cast on is a great go to cast on for many of us, but there are a few issue. One of them is estimating yarn, another is that annoying untwisting of the yarn, and the last is . . .
Keeping Track of Cast on.
In this Tuesday Tip, I’ll tackle all three.
First issue is estimating yarn for long tail. What I like to do is:
- Leaving a bit of a tail, wrap the yarn around my needle 10 times.
- Test that amount of yarn to make sure I can cast on 10 stitches.
- Use this to measure out my yarn (e.g. 7 times that length for 70 stitches)
Next there’s the issue of the yarn getting untwisted. Butterfly to the rescue!
After I measure out the yarn. I make a butterfly
Make a loop with the tail
Tighten down. Repeat this
Tuck it over the butterfly and . . .
Now, when you are casting on and the yarn starts to get untwisted, drop the butterfly off your thumb and the weight of it will spin the yarn back to it’s former self!
My favorite trick involves keeping track of how many stitches I’ve cast on. How many times have we lost count while casting on hundreds of stitches? Not fun. That’s where a bit of smooth cotton waste yarn comes in very handy.
Cast on 10, hold scrap yarn in front of stitches
Cast on another 10, move your scrap yarn
Repeat every 10 stitches
Easy peasy to keep track!
When you’re done, just pull out scrap yarn
For more tips LIVE, join me in one of my live classes. Keep watching the Upcoming Classes page. I update it frequently.
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Or book a private lesson with me live in New York, or streaming online.
For other knitting tips from Patty’s Knitting Bag of tricks you can learn 2 1/2 hours worth on my new DVD
Also available as a digital download
To read past Tuesday tips, just click on the Tutorial category of the blog (or here I did it for you!)
If you have a “is there a better way to do that”, or “how do you do that” question, leave me a comment, and I’ll add it to the Tuesday Tip list!
Love the yarn trick to keep count when casting on. I used markers but sometimes that gets uncomfortable in quantity or causes a gap in the stitch.
I agree with Joanne – love the waste yarn trick on the cast on. My other pet peeve is casting on a few hundred stitches for a bottom up sweater, carefully joining in the round, and then discovering 2″ up that the cast on was twisted. Would LOVE a tip to prevent that!
That’s an easy one. Two things, one trick is to put locking stitch markers in the base of the stitch every 20 stitches or so, then before you join in the round, lay out the needle and make sure to turn all the stitch markers so they face in.
BUT . . . even if you twist when you join, after the first round, check. If you did twist, there’s only one little thread of yarn at that point, and by diving the needle tip under that thread you can untwist. I show that in my Annie’s class “Circular Knitting Essentials”
Love the yarn trick! I add stitch markers every 10 – 20 sts, but this even easier!
I recently had the pleasure of casting on 540 stitches for a top-up-in-the round sweater, so I used the two ball method for the long tail cast on (use a separate ball for the long tail instead of making a slip knot in a single yarn), and the pattern wisely instructed to mark the 45-stitch pattern repeats with markers so that you could more easily keep track of the count. I decided to knit the few rows of ribbing before joining in the round exactly for the reason of avoiding the dreaded twist. Easy enough to seam a few rows at the bottom than to try to ensure it was untwisted with that many stitches, even on a 60-inch needle. Thanks for your tips!
I’m in Canada and would love to buy the book but not digital. Is it possible?
I’m in Canada and would love to buy the book but not digital. Is it possible?
It’s not a book, but a double DVD set. I can sell it as a DVD or if you don’t have a DVD player I can deliver your DVD file as a digital file.
Great tip for counting cast ons!! THANK YOU!
This makes me want to cast on 345 stitches just to try it out!