How to Choose Knitting Needles

"Casting on, that's the very very beginning of knitting. You're going to pick needles. Usually the pattern, in fact always, the pattern you're working on will tell you what needle to use. Beginners, it's usually easier to use like a needle, this is a 10 at 6 millimeters. It's usually easier to use something between a 10 and 12 if you're a beginner. We're doing beginning stuff. I'm going to cast on. Isn't this a nice red? If I can find the end we'll be happy. Okay, casting on. There is about 8 different ways to cast on. This one I decided is probably the easiest thing to do. When you start, and I'm only going to do 10 stitches or so. You make a little slipknot. You know how to make a slipknot. You twirl the yarn one over the other and then you pull the one side through and you have a slipknot. Then you stick your needle through the slipknot, pull it tight. There's your stitch one. Couldn't be easier. Here's the tricky part, but it's not really all that tricky. These 2 fingers here, your pointer and your thumb. You're going to pick up the yarn that's hanging here. I did that really fast. I'm going to do it again. You pick up the yarn that's hanging there so that you stick both fingers through the yarn and then you grab hold at the end. Let's do it one more time. Two fingers and you put them through the yarn and grab the back of the yarn with your other 3 fingers that are there. It's not that bad. Here's casting on, which is the hardest part of knitting, but if you can get through this you can get through anything. You're going to grab the yarn on the left side of your thumb. Let me do that again. Grab the yarn are the left side of your thumb. Then you're going to come over here and grab the yarn that's hanging off your pointer and pull it back through the thumb. I'm going to do that about 10 times so don't get stressed out about this. Knitting is all about relaxing. You're going to pull the yarn through the thumb, and then to the pointer, and then back out. We have 3 stitches. To the thumb, pick it up, to the pointer, and back around. Now we have 4 stitches. I don't want to go any faster. To the thumb, pick it up, to the pointer, around, and back down. Thumb, pointer. See anybody can make a mistake. Thumb, pointer, back around. Making a mistake means nothing because you just drop it and keep going. How many stitches did I have? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and then thumb, pointer, around, 8, thumb, pointer, around, thumb, pointer, around. We're done casting up because we're only going to use 10 stitches for our little demo. Most of the time you'll never use 10 stitches. You'll probably have somewhere between 20 and 100 for whatever your project is. That's the way your start casting on."