Tag Archives: provisional

Casting On- The Provisional Cast On

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I want to introduce you to my friend, the provisional cast-on.  It’s a nifty little technique that can be completely invaluable.  It lets you cast on (and knit), then come back and knit in the other direction.  The finished product is insanely stretchy and totally unnoticeable.  It’s perfect for top-down sweaters (so you can knit the entire sweater, then knit the collar).  It’s also great for lace shawls and scarves, where you don’t want an unsightly cast-on edge.

So, how do you do it?

Grab some scrap yarn and a largeish crochet hook and chain several stitches more than you want to cast on.  Don’t worry about making the crochet look pretty, it’s all going to be removed before you finish the garment.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThen, use your knitting needle to pick up and knit one stitch in each chain.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAKeep going until you have the number of stitches that your pattern calls for.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThen, just knit your pattern as you normally would.  Ignore the ugly neon green crochet stitches at the collar of your sweater, they will be gone soon enough.OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAHere comes the cool part.  Carefully undo the crocheted chain one stitch at a time (or a few stitches at a time).

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAnd slip your needle into the newly freed stitches.  (In knitter’s lingo, these are now “live stitches.”)OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAKeep going, until you’ve picked up all the live stitches.OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERANow you’re ready to keep going.  Join your yarn and start knitting the other direction!

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Techniques: Tubular Cast-On

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Nine times out of ten, when I cast on for a project, I use a basic long-tail cast on.  But sometimes, if the Knitting Gods so move me, and if the project is really special, I like to break out my Tubular Cast-On.

(I’m using it for my Stellar’s Jay Sweater.)

It’s absolutely gorgeous, especially paired with fine ribbing (it’s perfect with a 1×1 ribbing on sock cuffs).  Properly executed, it looks like the stitches on the front of the piece simply swoop around the edge and continue on the back.

tubular8[1]And (double bonus!), it is super stretchy, so you don’t have to worry about weird tension issues that sometimes happen at cast-on edges.

There are a couple ways to do it, which have all been written about online many, many (many) times.

The way I learned, is apparently the “Italian Way.” Who would have thought?  There’s a great tutorial for it here.

There’s another way to do a tubular cast on, that frankly, looks much easier, but I haven’t tried it, so you’ll have to give it a shot and let me know how it goes.  Here‘s a tutorial that looks pretty good.

What kinds of cast-ons do you like?