Advanced Knitting: Long Tail Cast Ons

Video Transcript

"Sometimes when you have a pattern that has a lot of stitches and you don't want to estimate, you can use an alternative way with the long tail cast on. You can take two strands of your working yarn, either from two separate balls of yarn, or from the inside and outside of a skein. You'll make your slip knot with those two strands. This does not count as your first stitch. You'll put that on your needle in your right hand and begin to do your long tail cast as you did before. This way you're working from virtually endless amounts of yarn, so if you've cast on a hundred or more stitches, you've got yarn coming from both balls of yarn and you don't need to estimate. I would recommend putting markers in between your stitches every 25 or so so that you'll have an easier time counting. But the yarn just keeps coming. You don't have to worry about running out of yarn, having too short a tail, too long a tail. When you're done, you would just snip one of the strands -- doesn't really matter which because they're both coming from after balls of yarn. And then you would knit across to the beginning of your cast on and you'll just pull that slip knot out because that doesn't count as a first stitch. So it really is the same, you're still getting the same cast on method -- the long tail cast on -- you just don't have to estimate all your stitches when you've got a lot like 75 or a 100. You just get to the end of your row. Here's that slip knot that I made, and I just pull it out. And it's secure, it just gets woven in later."