How to Work the Tubular Cast On

Hi, there. I'm Corrina Ferguson for The Knitting Circle. In this lesson, we're going to learn how to work a tubular cast on. So, let's get started. So, it's time to do our tubular cast on and the tubular cast on starts off with a generous swatch of plain stockinette fabric.

And that's knit the right side, purl wrong side. Any color that is totally different from the color you're going to use for your actual project. And the reason for that is because we work our stockinette here and then we join our new color and we work a few rows of stockinette, in order to, to be able to pick up, to do the tubular cast on. And when we're going to do that, we wanna be able to easily see where we're going to pick up from. So, when you look at the wrong side of your work, you can see, oh, this is where we're actually going to pick up the stitches and can you see how easy it is to see the stitches in-between?

'Cause you've got that nice line of cream in-between the purples and you want to make sure it's a good contrast. You wouldn't want, for example, something like this in the purple, like this lighter purple, in the purple. That's not enough contrast. Even the light and the cream isn't enough contrast. So, you want to use something that's very different from what you're actually going to knit your project in, so that you can find those bumps.

So, for tubular cast on, what I do is I cast on half of the number of stitches that I want when I'm finished, plus one. So, in this case I have four, eight, 12, 13, 16, 17. So, when I get finished with this I'm going to have 32 stitches. And the reason I want to do the plus one is because otherwise you don't have enough bumps to pick up with. And we're going to get rid of that plus one when we finish the cast on.

So, this is how you pick up for the tubular cast on. And we're going to do this in a one by one rib. So, the very first stitch on the needle, we're just going to knit it like normal and then we're gonna go and we're gonna get the very first bump. See the very first bump there? And we're going to put it up on the left-hand needle tip and we're going to purl it.

And then, we're gonna to knit the next stitch. And then we're gonna to go get the next bump. See the next bump there? Put it up on the left-hand needle tip. Now, when I put it up on the left-hand needle tip to keep it from being twisted, I insert my needle tip like this, like they're going together and that orients it correctly on the needle tip to purl.

So, we're gonna to do that, knit one, pick up one to purl and we're gonna to do that all the way down to the end of the row. So, when we get to the point where we've actually picked up all of the bumps from the back, we'll have one stitch over and we're just going to knit that very last stitch. Now, when we join this to work in the round that stitch will be worked together on the first round with the first stitch in the round just to eliminate it 'cause it's just one extra stitch. So, I started with 16. So, now I should have 33.

Actually, I started with 17. So, I should have 33. Now, what we need to do, is we need to get rid of the cream stuff. So, I'm going to turn this to see. Now, what you're gonna to want here is, you're going to want some very sharp tipped scissors.

I like to use these little guys. I also have a pair of scissors that's like super duper pointy but these are good for it. You just want to have good points on your scissors. I always start this in the center. I find it easier to go from the center and start pulling things out then to catch the perfect end.

So, I'm gonna go and I'm gonna to grab a strand and I'm gonna make sure that it's only cream. And then I just go and I clip a few random ones, making sure that each time I'm getting as close to the purple as possible but only grabbing the cream ones. And I just kind of do little snip, snips. I can see it's starting to come apart. It's very important that you never grab any of the purple and see we're already starting to get good here and we just keep going, going, going.

And then once you get to the end, it's a little easier once you've already got some of this breaking away, for lack of a better term. And then I'm going to go ahead and be snip, snip, snippin' down here. And then I'll be able to show you what it looks like, once we get this all pulled out. There we go and get my hands disentangled from the scissors. And then you're just going to have some fluffs to pull out.

So, I'm going to pull out fluffs here. If you're using very fine yarn, like if you were doing this with a sock weight yarn, sometimes I actually get tweezers. If I can't get all the little bits and pieces but this is a little bit bigger. So, it's a little easier to grab. So then, what we have here and you can see a very nice, smooth edge because basically those are all knits stitches along the top of the edge.

So, let's look at another sock edge. This was my regular long-tail cast on for the sock and you can see what the cast on looks like with the things versus what this very smooth tubular looks like. So, I'm going to grab my extra DPNs here and start dividing things out. So, we're going to go and we're going to divide it into fours. So, it's 32.

So, we're going to want one, two, three four, five, six, seven, eight, on each needle. So, now my tubular cast on stitches are arranged on my double pointed needles and there's an extra one at the end of the last needle here, where we finished off. So, what I like to do is transfer that to the first needle in the round. And then I knit those two together. That eliminates the extra stitch and it closes up that little gap there.

And then, I just continue in my knit one, purl one round, my purl one rib, as I've established. And you just keep going around and just to show you again, how neat and tidy we've got here. Got the edge here and it's almost like it's just like a folded over knitted fabric, 'cause that's really what it is but it just makes a really smooth, really stretchy cast on that's beautiful for socks. Also good for cuffs and hems. Thank you so much for joining me to learn how to work a tubular cast on.

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