Circular Cast On

As you know when it comes to knitting, there are lots of ways that you can cast on, and you probably already know quite a few ways to cast on your knitting. Of course, you have the common ones, such as the long-tail cast on, knitted cast on, or even the backwards loop. But there are dozens of ways that you can cast on your knitting, and actually, there are whole books dedicated just to casting on and binding off your knitting. In this video, I'd like to show you one cast on that you don't see too often, but I think it's a really important one to know, and that's the circular cast on. This cast on allows you to start from the center of your knitting and work your way out.

So it's a really great cast on to know for projects like toys or amigurumi but also things like circular or pi shawls, because what you can do with this cast on is make a center that you can pull tight to close and so that you won't have any hole at the center of your knitting. So let's take a look at how to do this circular cast on. To start, of course, you're gonna need some yarn and some needles and whatever needles you'd be using for your project. I'm first gonna demonstrate how to do this on a longer circular needle, and I will work the first few rounds using the magic loop method. So we're just gonna get a little bit of yarn here, and then we'll start by making a loop here, just like that, and we're gonna fold that loop over onto its tail.

So you can see I have the tail coming this way, and then this other piece of yarn here is going to my ball of yarn. And I'm just gonna take my knitting needle and go right through the center. So you can see I'm going over this first strand here that's closest to me, and then under the other two strands. I'm just gonna pick it up just like this, so I have a loop just loosely hanging off my needle. So from there, I'm gonna just move my yarn over here to the left side because we're gonna wanna put the yarn into our left hand, and we want to hold the yarn such that we have the loop that we've made sort of in both of our hands, and that's on the bottom, and then our working yarn's coming over our left index finger on the top, and our needle is in between.

And so now we're gonna start casting on. So to do that, we're gonna go over the yarn, the working yarn, and bring it back through the loop. And now we have one stitch on our needle. Now we're gonna come just over the top and yarn over, just like that, and that's actually creating our second stitch. Then we're gonna go back into the loop, between the loop and the working yarn, grab the yarn again, and scoop it under the loop, and we've got a third stitch cast on.

And you'll just keep working like that. With this cast on, you're gonna want an odd number of stitches. So you're gonna wanna start and end by working into that loop and grabbing the yarn. So let's see how many stitches we have here. We have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.

Let's do two more. So we're gonna go over the top just like that, and then under the loop and in between the loop and the yarn to grab that yarn, and bring it in. Now, while I'm still kind of pinching everything, if I take my yarn tail and start pulling on it, you can see I can close this loop right up. And you might not wanna close it completely at first because we are gonna have to knit these stitches. So you might need a little bit of space here still to work our stitches, but eventually, we'll be able to pull that closed.

So because I'm doing this using magic loop, I'm just gonna take about half the stitches and put it on each side. So I've got four on one side and five on the other. We'll get our working yarn here going into the back. So our working yarn will be on our back needle, and we'll just rearrange things. So that's in the back.

And then we can bring this needle out to start working magic loop. So I'll just go ahead and just knit around. And you can see the stitches just look more or less like regular stitches. We're just working into them normally. I'll come around here to the other side to do the other half.

And that's all there is to it. That's all there is to the cast on, is once you have those stitches cast on, you would just keep following whatever pattern you're using. And then once you've worked a few more rows, you can just pull that yarn all the way tight. And you can already see, no hole there. So I have a little sample here that I've made, and you can see this would be like the start of a circular or pi shawl.

I did some of the pi shawl math that you would normally do when creating that type of project. And you can see I started with that circular cast on, and there are these little holes here. Those are just eyelets I made to increase, but the center itself is completely closed up. And here's another example. This is a little hot air balloon that I made recently.

And I started on the very bottom on the basket, and I used this same technique where I did the circular cast on and then started working out to build the base of the basket. And then once I had a few rounds, I was able to just pull that tail and pull it completely closed. If you're familiar with crochet, with crochet, this is a very similar technique to the adjustable loop or adjustable ring that you see in crochet where you would do single crochets into a loop and then pull it tight to close. We're essentially doing that same thing but with knitting. So let's go ahead and take a look at how to do this if we're using double-pointed needles.

With double-pointed needles, the technique is exactly the same. We're just gonna have to get some extra needles into the mix when we go to knit that first round. So I'm just gonna start with one of my double-pointed needles, and we're gonna do the exact same thing. We're gonna cross that loop, just like so, and then we're gonna fold it over the yarn tail, just like that. And then, once again, just with our one double-pointed needle, we're gonna go over the strand closest to us, and then under both those other strands to pick up that loop of yarn.

Again, I'm gonna put that working yarn into my left hand, and we're doing the exact same thing. I've got the loop of yarn on the bottom. I'm sort of holding it with my thumb and middle finger on my left hand, and also just kind of gripping it with my right hand with my knitting needle too. And then we have the working yarn coming up over my index finger. Once again, we're just gonna scoop that yarn off the index finger and bring it through the loop to cast on a stitch, and then go back around to grab that yarn again for our second stitch, then under, three, four, five, six.

And let's just do seven this time. Seven. So now we have seven stitches on the needle, and I'm just gonna pull this just a little bit tighter so things are less likely to slip off, and it would be the same thing. Now we're ready to knit in the round. So you can now configure your double-pointed needles however you like.

I have a tendency to work with three double-pointed needles, and then use a fourth double pointed needle for knitting. So I use four needles total, but you might like to use four needles going around, and then use a fifth to knit. That's fine too. However you like to knit is perfectly fine. However you like to knit in the round, it all works.

So now we're just gonna pull out a little extra yarn here. And once again, this is a little bit the fiddly part, like any start to your knitting in the round, just trying to get all your stitches going the right way, making sure that you don't have any twists in your knitting. So we're just gonna pull this a little bit tighter, and let's find our working yarn. Here we go. So our working yarn's coming off this needle.

So now we're ready to work onto needle one. So I'm just gonna grab my fourth needle. And once again, we're just gonna knit the stitches. And whatever pattern you're following will tell you what to do here. Typically, you are gonna see this first round is gonna be just knit stitches, just so that you're not creating any extra stitches that might make it a little bit harder to close up that hole.

But again, each individual designer does things a little bit differently, so you'll just follow whatever pattern you happen to be using. So we'll just keep on knitting here. We've come to the end of our little round, and you can see we still have a little bit of a hole there. But if I just give that tail a tug, I've completely closed it up. And it's a really, really nice technique to use for these types of projects because otherwise you might just cast on a small number of stitches, join in the round, but then you're gonna have a tiny little hole to seam up at the end, or sometimes that hole might serve a purpose, it might be decorative with something, like a pi shawl, for example.

But in a lot of cases, you are gonna want that center to be closed up, and this allows you to do it with just the cast on. So that's all there is to the circular cast on. Once you get the hang of it, it's a really, really handy cast on to have in your knitting tool bag of tricks, and I hope that you'll try it on a circular project soon.