Chained cast-on

Back to our regularly scheduled tutorial. I hated this one as purely a cast-on, it's relatively ugly and difficult to do evenly. So why the hell would you want to learn it? Because it's a necessary step for the tubular cast-on, which is way cool and has nothing to with surfers or outdated 80's lingo, just an awesome finished edge. More on that tomorrow. But for now, brace yourself: the chained cast-on is coming for you. And it totally demands that you have a crochet needle similarly sized to the needles you plan to use. How presumptuous.

Chained cast-on

We start with our old friend, the slip knot. Situation normal, right? But this time, we're using waste yarn, in a contrasting color to the yarn we plan to use.


Place the slip knot onto the crochet needle.

Crochet needle in right hand, knitting needle in left hand. It's like a crafting yin and yang.

Hold the yarn in your left hand (along with your knitting needle) and make sure the yarn is running under the knitting needle to the crochet needle. Hook the yarn with your crochet needle, pulling it over the knitting needle:


Then continue pulling it through the loop on the crochet needle:


Tighten down the stitch by pulling on the yarn your left hand:

Voila! One stitch cast-on.

Repeat, starting with the step that begins "Hold the yarn in your left hand.." until you've cast-on the desired number of stitches.

Here's what it looks like after you've cast-on a few (not to be confused with tying on a few):


Now you can go ahead and use this as your cast-on, but I didn't do all of that work (crocheting is flipping hard, apparently) for a crappy edge.

Tomorrow: How are we going to use this to facilitate a super awesome cast-on?