Figure-8 Cast On

Hi there. I'm Corrina Ferguson, for The Knitting Circle. In this video, I'm going to show you how to work the figure-eight cast-on. So let's get started. So in this video, we are going to learn how to do a figure-eight cast-on.

A lot of times with socks, people like to work them from the toe up. So you start at the toe, you go through the foot, up through the leg and all that. And that's what this kind of represents here. It's like a little mini toe going on. So if you look at my little mini toe and you look at the blue stitches here, you can kind of see they go back and forth in the little Vs, just like your stockinette stitch does.

And that is from a figure-eight cast-on. So I'm going to show you how to do that here. You can do the figure-eight cast-on on double points, as I am here. Let me get these guys out of the way for a second. Or you can use a long circular if you prefer a magic loop.

Or two circulars if that's the way you knit socks. It really will work for any of them. So, I'm going to grab my yarn. I've got my working yarn here. Here's my tail hanging out.

I'm going to start with a slip knot. So, I'm going to wrap the yarn over my index finger, like this, the little cross. And then I'm going to pull the working yarn through that loop that I made. So that's my slip knot. Grab one of my DPNs.

Place it on there and snug it up. And then I'm gonna move it kind of closer to the end of the needle, so it's not so hard to work with. This is going to be my top double-point needle. And I kind of wish I had ones that were different colors, but I don't. So I'm going to place them, so that the longest slip knot is on the top.

And then there's an empty double-point on the bottom. If you were doing this on two circs, you would have one circ on the top and one on the bottom and then stuff dangling over here off camera. If you were doing it on a long circular for a magic loop, you would just have the two ends together. So, I'm going to hold these a little bit apart. When you're doing it, I suggest you hold them as close together as you can, 'cause that makes it tighter.

So the yarn is coming off the slip knot and underneath. And we're going to wrap it under the bottom needle and over. And then under the top needle and over. And see, that's my figure-eight motion. And I'm going to do that again.

Under and over, under and over. And I'm just going to get about six stitches on each needle. And that's going to include counting that slip. So right now we have, four and four. And then we're going to do it a couple more times.

Five and five. And six and six. Now, we are going to grab a new double pointed needle. And we're going to have this working yarn and we're going to work into these stitches along the top needle. So it's going to be a little tight here.

But we're going to wrap it around and we're just going to knit all the way across those. And as you take them off you want to be careful that the needles, the stitches on the bottom needle, don't try to escape. 'Cause they will do that. They are sneaky. And then we're going to do that all the way down the top needle.

And, always takes longer than I think it's gonna. And then the last one of course, is that slip knot that we started with. And then you'll have stitches on the top and the bottom needle. And then we're going to flip it around. And you can kind of see here what I've got going.

Now I'm using four DPNs for my socks. If you are using five, you might wanna do half of those on one and a half on another. 'Cause you're gonna have way more than six stitches. I only have six stitches on each needle. But, when you go to do the ones that are on the other side, those are the ones that are going to want to be through the back loop.

So they're going to be a little different. So we're going to go through the back loop. Snug that up a little bit make sure I have my working yarn and not my tail so I run out fast and they sag. But you can kind of see with this stitch, how it is oriented so that it's twisted. The front leg of the stitch is sitting to the left and the back leg is sitting towards the right.

That's where we're going to knit these, through the back loop so that they're not twisted. And that happens on that second needle. I'm going to do three of these and then I'm going to add another needle in. So this isn't so tight and crazy-making. I prefer to do this on magic loop a lot of the times because I just find it a little easier.

But then I'm just going to go in, go through the back loop. So this is my wrestle and porcupines moment. Make sure I've got my working yarn where I want it to be. And then I'm just gonna knit those three stitches through the back loop. And then I have stitches set up so that I can do the toe of a sock.

So let's grab our little piece again to see. Pull these out so you can kinda see. So we've got stitches, stitches, stitches. And then those are the same stitches here that I've worked in blue. And then I continued and I did a bunch of increases to make the toe of a sock.

Thank you so much for joining me to learn how to work the figure-eight cast-on. Check out our website for more great videos.