
Long tail cast on is a great go to cast on for many of us, but there are a few issue. One of them is estimating yarn, another is that annoying untwisting of the yarn, and the last is . . .
Keeping Track of Cast on.
In this Tuesday Tip, I’ll tackle all three.
First issue is estimating yarn for long tail. What I like to do is:
- Leaving a bit of a tail, wrap the yarn around my needle 10 times.
- Test that amount of yarn to make sure I can cast on 10 stitches.
- Use this to measure out my yarn (e.g. 7 times that length for 70 stitches)
Next there’s the issue of the yarn getting untwisted. Butterfly to the rescue!




Now, when you are casting on and the yarn starts to get untwisted, drop the butterfly off your thumb and the weight of it will spin the yarn back to it’s former self!
My favorite trick involves keeping track of how many stitches I’ve cast on. How many times have we lost count while casting on hundreds of stitches? Not fun. That’s where a bit of smooth cotton waste yarn comes in very handy.





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For other knitting tips from Patty’s Knitting Bag of tricks you can learn 2 1/2 hours worth on my DVD

Also available as a digital download
To read past Tuesday tips, just click on the Tutorial category of the blog (or here I did it for you!)
If you have a “is there a better way to do that”, or “how do you do that” question, leave me a comment, and I’ll add it to the Tuesday Tip list!


