Knitting 101 Tutorial: How to Cast-On - By RainCityKnits
Channel: Krista Steel-Varsakis
Date: 08/08/2012

A short video demonstrating how to cast-on. FYI: This is often abbreviated as CO in knitting patterns. After making this video, I learned that this method is also referred to as the backwards loop method and the single cast-on.

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Transcript: Hi there. I'm Krista from RainCityKnits. Thanks so much for tuning in.  Today I'm going to teach you the first step in learning how to knit, which is how to cast-on.  The materials you'll need for this are some straight needles, such as these and some yarn. Pretty straight forward there! In order to cast-on, you'll first need to start by creating a slip knot with your yarn so me, I just twist it in a loop such as this, and I pull the middle piece through and voila. If I were to pull the yarn, the knot would pop off. Pop! There you go. So, I twist it, pull through with my finger and I have a knot. This is the first part of casting-on. You will not count this loop as one of your cast-on stitches because... you won't. I guess that's why. So I should mention that I am a left-handed knitter. And what this basically means for you is everything I'm doing just do the opposite if you're right handed. If you're left-handed, then gravy. Some of you might wonder why I'm not just doing it with my right-hand - I could. I'm choosing to support us lefties because there aren't that many of us in the world. And we need all the help we can get. Anyway, we've slipped our knot on our needle like this and as you can see giving the rest of the leading yarn a tug, it's pretty secure. Don't worry about the tail. We'll deal with that guy later. In order to cast-on, you need to know how many stitches you need to cast-on and that will be determined by the pattern. Every pattern will say cast-on X number of stitches.Sometimes they'll abbreviate it and write CO. That just means cast-on. Welcome to knitting - there's tons of abbreviations. So with the loop on the needle in my passive hand and the yarn in my dominant hand, which for me is left but of course in the video looks right so here we go, lots of confusion for everyone. Just remember that the yarn should be in your dominant hand and the needle in your passive hand. You're going to take the yarn and loop it around your thumb such as this so as you can see the yarn is crossing itself right at the base of my thumb. How convenient. And then we're going to stick the tip of our needle through and we're going to pull that stitch on. I'll do this a few times. I know it can be really hard with these videos to see what is happening. The lighting in here isn't great. Ok, so again we're going to take the yarn still in our dominant hand, loop it around and stick our needle underneath and pull the loop on. So let's do that several times. So take the yarn, loop it around, put the tip through and pull. And again I apologize for the lighting. Hopefully you can see enough to do this. Maybe if I move my hand a little bit, you'll be able to see. So essentially, you're just going to do this as many times as the pattern calls for. This isn't technically knitting yet but it is an important first step so there you go. So now you can see we have all these lovely little stitches - or cast-on stitches - in a row and these will be very helpful when we actually go to knit in our next video. Just want to mention before I sign off that there are different ways to cast-on.  There is no right or wrong way. You'll realize with knitting that has been around for centuries that lots of different techniques have evolved for every single technique - I guess that's redundant.  Do what you're most comfortable with. That's my number one rule and if you have any questions please feel free to ask below. I'd be very happy to answer. Thank you so much for tuning in. Again, I'm Krista from RainCityKnits. And we'll see you next time. Thanks! Bye!