Day 10: Cowl Part 1 – Supplies & Cast On

Hi everyone, I'm Jen Lucas, and welcome back to our 14 day Learn to Knit series here at The Knitting Circle. Over the last several lessons, I've showed you how to do everything from cast on to bind off. Now that we've learned those knitting basics, we're ready to work our first project, a small little cowl with a button on it. It's so cute, I think you're really gonna enjoy knitting it, and it's the perfect beginner project, because you get to practice all of those stitches that we've learned. So in this lesson, I'd like to show you what supplies you're gonna need for this cowl, as well as how to cast on and work the first setup row.

Let's take a look. Here's the cowl that we'll be making over the next few lessons. It's a great first project. We're going to be practicing those stitches that we learned in the first few videos of this Learn to Knit series, and at the end you're gonna have this beautiful project that was actually pretty quick and easy to knit. So let's just take a look at how this is made.

So we're gonna begin by casting on over here along this edge, and we're gonna be working this way. So we're gonna cast on, and then work in garter stitch for this first section, and that's knitting every stitch, every single row, so we'll be getting lots of practice on that knit stitch. Then we're gonna move to this stitch pattern, which is called the purl ridge stitch, and the purl ridge is created by working a little bit of stockinette, which is knitting on the right side of our fabric, and purling on the wrong side of our fabric, and then working a ridge of purls on the wrong side, to sort of create this garter stitch ridge, or purl ridge. So we'll work that section and then we'll move over to the end where we're creating the eyelets. And so the eyelets will be worked mostly in garter stitch, so we'll be doing lots of that knit stitch again, but then we're gonna add rows where we're working a yarn over, and a knit two together, to create the holes.

What's really great about this cowl is that we can just use one of the holes as a buttonhole. And so for this particular cowl, I've just added one button here, but if you had more buttons, you actually could sew more buttons on, because this whole row of eyelets could actually be some buttonholes. You probably wouldn't put a button for every hole, just because the buttons would be too close together. But if you wanted it to be more of a fully buttoned up cowl, you could add four or five buttons along here as well. It's really up to you.

That's what's great about knitting, it's your project, and your knitting, so you can really make it your own. So let's go ahead and talk about what supplies we're gonna need. Let's talk about the supplies that you're gonna need for this project. First up let's talk yarn. For this cowl you're gonna need 140 yards of a super bulky yarn, and so how you will know that is a super bulky yarn is when you go to the store to shop, you're gonna look for on the yarn label a number six super bulky symbol here, and that will tell you that you have your super bulky yarn.

So this particular yarn that I am going to be using is 108 yarns per skein, so I'm gonna need to have two skeins of it in order to complete my project. And in later videos, I'll show you how to join in the second ball when we get there. So you're gonna need your yarn, and then you're also gonna need some knitting needles. You're gonna need a size US 11, or eight millimeter knitting needles. So here I have the straight knitting needles that are the single point.

If you only can find a circular needle that will work too, I will actually be knitting the cowl with you on a circular needle, so it's really up to you if you want to use the straights, or if you want a circular needle, but it's going to need to be a US size 11, eight millimeter. Next, we just have a few other little notions. Of course we're gonna need our scissors, so that we can cut our yarn as we're finishing our project. We'll need that yarn or tapestry needle to weave in our ends. We're also gonna need one stitch marker, and I like these plastic ones that are sort of like a coil-less safety pin.

This isn't absolutely necessary for this project, but when you're working in garter stitch, the fabric looks the same on the right side and the wrong side, and so I find it really helpful to have a stitch marker, so that I can mark the right side of my work. Just, it makes it a little bit easier to keep track of what I'm doing, so if you can get one of these, that would be great. And then of course we're gonna need our button. We're gonna need a 1.25 inch or 32 millimeter button. If you don't have a stash of buttons, you may want to wait until you're done with your project to pick out your button.

A lot of times what I'll do is I will knit whatever I'm knitting, this cowl for example, and then I'll go to the store with the cowl when it's finished to pick my button, just to ensure that it will fit through the hole. But if you want to buy it ahead of time, or you have a stash of buttons, we're gonna be looking for a 1.25 inch button, and then you're gonna need something to sew the button on to your cowl, so here I just have a little tapestry needle and some embroidery floss, because I also like to cross stitch, but you could just obviously use a needle and thread. A lot of times the tapestry needle that you're using for weaving in your ends, this one's pretty thick, so you can see that this one's not gonna fit through the hole of the button, so you just need to find a needle that's going to fit through the hole of your button, and then if you have thinner yarn already, you could use even thinner yarn to sew your button on. You're just gonna want your thread, or thinner yarn to be in a coordinating color. Here I just have some white, that's what I have, but if you're using gray yarn, you might want gray thread, blue thread, whatever, for whatever color you're using of yarn.

So there is the supplies. So let's go ahead and get started on knitting our project. When knitting a project, you're pretty much always going to be following a pattern. Sometimes you're gonna make up your own thing, but most of the time you're going to be following a knitting pattern. Knitting patterns have certain ways that things are written, there's a lot of abbreviations, so I just want to quickly go over just our pattern instructions for the next few videos, and also talk about some of the abbreviations.

So in this video we're gonna be looking at just part one here. We're not really gonna do too much today, because we're still gathering our supplies, but we're gonna be casting on and just working one single row. But you're seeing here that you see C O, S T S, W S, so what does that all mean? In a knitting pattern, you're going to have a section that has abbreviations, which I have here, and the abbreviations are gonna tell you what everything means. For this particular easy pattern, you might find these simple patterns not have any abbreviations, it might be fully written out, but think about as you go on your knitting journey, and you want to start knitting sweaters, or larger projects, the abbreviations really help shorten the pattern, so you're not printing out 50 pages in order to knit a sweater.

So the abbreviations are here, so you can see for our first section here, we have, we're going to use the long tail cast on, and cast on, C O here, 27 S T S, which is stitches. So we're gonna start by using the long tail cast on, cast on 27 stitches. Then we're gonna work one row on the wrong side, and we know it's the wrong side because here we have a W S, and we can see here that W S means wrong side. So it's really important that you take a look at your abbreviations when you're starting a project, so that you know what everything means. As we get further down here, you'll see things like we have the R S, that's right side.

Here we have a K2, P23, K2. We can see that the K will mean knit, the P will mean mean purl, and then even down here we have rep, that means repeat, so we'll be repeating some of the rows that we already did, and I'll go over all of this again as we're working further along in our cowl, but it's something that I just wanted to take a look at right at the top, so that you know, as you're reading your pattern, if you're seeing something and you're not sure what it means, just refer to your abbreviations. Okay, so now that we've done that, let's go ahead and cast on for our project. So here I have my yarn, and so you can do this a couple different ways, working from this particular put up of yarn, the way the yarn is wound. So here I have the outside strand of the yarn.

So you definitely can use this if you like. The only disadvantage to this is that sometimes the ball sort of starts jumping around as you're knitting, because this thing is unwinding from the outside, so it might start twisting around like this. That can be a little bit annoying as you're, as you're working your project, but totally perfectly fine way to start your project. The other thing is that inside in the middle of this, there is also another strand of yarn that you can work from, and then you're working from the center. It keeps the ball a little bit neater as you're working.

The disadvantage to doing this is that you have to find the center of this, and sometimes you can end up pulling out a lot of yarn, and it can make a big yarn tangle, but let's go ahead and try. So I like to just sort of hold it like this and sort of just reach in. Then we're gonna grab some yarn, and there we go. And you can see, we did kind of pull out a little bit of a jumble of yarn, but here's my tail here. So sometimes what I'll do if I do want to work from the inside of the ball of yarn, and this did happen, where I pulled out sort of this jumble, is I'll just take this, and just start winding it from the outside, just loosely.

Sorta just have everything neat, so then once I've used up all this yarn, now everything will just pull out right from the center, and it will be nice and neat. But this is a personal preference thing. You really can try both ways and see what you like, and how you want to start your ball of yarn. But it is a risk that you're gonna take if you try to pull from the center, sometimes you do end up pulling out too much, and sort of making a tangle of your yarn. Okay, so now that we have our yarn, we're ready to get started, so we're gonna cast on 27 stitches.

So if you have your straight needles, you're gonna use your straight needles, I'm just gonna go ahead and use a circular needle, only because that way then my needles aren't banging on the table as I'm working here. So to start, we're gonna do the long tail cast on, and we've learned this in another video, but I'm gonna go ahead and review it again. So we're gonna start by needing a tail that is long enough that we can cast on our 27 stitches. So what I like to do again is leave a little bit of a tail, six to eight inches, and now I'm gonna wrap this around 10 times. Four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10.

I'm gonna pull that off. I know that that's about 10 stitches. Get my needle out of the way there. So that's 10 stitches. So I'm gonna fold it over, that would be about 20.

That'll be about 30, that's close enough to 27 for me. So that would give us about 30 stitches, we need 27, so that's good. And then usually I'll pull off just a little bit extra, just to make sure that I have enough yarn. And so now we're gonna go ahead and start that cast on. We're gonna make the slipknot by folding the yarn over, folding it over the tail, bringing our needle into the mix here.

We're gonna go over, under, over, and then pull it down. And so now we have our slipknot, and that has made our first stitch. So now I'm going to go ahead, and start casting on my stitches. So I have my tail, my long tail, that's going over my thumb. And then the working yarn that's going to the ball is over my forefinger.

I'm pulling them down to make that V. I'm going under and through the loop, around the yarn on my thumb, pulling it through the loop, taking my thumb out and down. That's gonna make two stitches. I'm gonna go under and through the loop, around, through the loop again, and down. Now I have three stitches.

So we're just gonna keep repeating this, until we have 27 stitches. I'm just gonna put 13 stitches on my needle, just so you don't have to sit here and watch me knit long rows, but you're gonna cast on 27 total. So you just keep working in this way until you have your 27. Okay, so I just have some here for my swatch, you'll have 27 stitches on your needle, and then you'll have your tail here. So now we're ready to work that next row, which is a wrong side row.

When you're casting on using the long tail cast on like we've done here, the next row of your knitting is a wrong side row, and so a lot of times you'll see patterns where if it tells you to use the long tail cast on, you'll often have a pattern direction like we have here that says next row, and tell you what to do. It's sort of like a setup row to get us ready to continue working the pattern. So you'll have your 27 stitches, and now we're gonna work the next row, which is the wrong side, and we're gonna knit all stitches. So to do that, we're gonna flip this over. We're going to put the needle with all the stitches on it into our left hand.

Now we're going to just knit all of these stitches. I am now going to just be knitting using my conventional way of knitting, which I knit English, I'm a thrower, but if in the earlier videos you decided that you were, you're a continental knitter, you're gonna obviously have the yarn in your left hand. Again, like I said in those videos, it's going to create the exact same stitches, it's just what your preference is, but I'm just gonna go ahead here now and knit the way that I knit, which is the English method. So we're gonna go ahead and knit all of these stitches. You would have 27 on yours, 27 stitches on your needle for the cowl, and you're just going to insert your needle from left to right, wrap the yarn around, pull the loop through, and then take the stitch from the left needle off, and you have your new stitch on the right needle.

And again, whether you're doing that with your right hand or left hand, where the working yarn is, it does not matter. It's gonna be creating the exact same stitch. So you'll just knit across all 27 of those stitches for your cowl. And that's it, we've worked the setup row. So now if we just flip it over this way, you can see we've created this ridge here, and that's, we're starting to create that garter stitch.

So at this point, I'm just gonna grab my stitch marker here. I'm gonna open it up, and I'm just gonna bring it through one of these bumps here, and mark it like this. And now I know that this is the right side of my work, because we just were working on this side, which is our wrong side. Now I flipped it over and that's the right side. So now we've cast on, and we've worked the first row of our cowl, so we're on our way to having our beautiful project.

There you go. We've cast on for your very first knitting project. Soon, we will have the thing complete, and you'll be ready to show it off to all your friends and family. Thank you so much for watching me here, and joining me on this knitting journey. I look forward to seeing you back here tomorrow, where we'll learn how to work the first section of our cowl.