Learn the Magic Cast On

The magic cast-on is something every modern knitter should know. When I teach classes at live events, I try to sneak it in whenever possible because it's so useful. Before learning the technique, let's chat about why it's valuable. The magic cast-on provides new solutions to some long-term knitting problems. Well, if not problems, at least annoyances.

Many patterns simply call for a provisional cast-on but let the knitter figure out how they want to do it. To execute it, many knitters, including myself, have to go look up instructions in a book or online and then gather more materials like crochet hooks and waste yarn. This might weaken our enthusiasm for the project. With a magic cast-on, you don't need the crochet hook or the waste yarn. You don't need to do the fiddly and precarious step of tearing out that waste yarn, either.

My goal is to turn you all onto its uses. You'll feel very clever and enjoy beautiful results. Many knitters do not like the figure-eight cast-on or the Turkish cast-on because of its loose stitches. So let's take a look at those a minute. Prior to the magic cast-on, you had to figure out a way from which you can work both directions.

So here's one way using double-pointed needles and the Turkish cast-on. You get your two needles together, you hold onto your yarn, and you would wrap both needles like so. Here's what's a bit annoying about that. The earlier stitches that you wrapped get kind of loose and a little bit silly to work, so you have to get rid of them later. If I turn this over and we look at the back, there are no purl bumps back there.

Keep that in mind for when we compare to the magic cast-on later. And then to work them, it's a little bit fiddly to get in between here and wrap and move on. See, I'm really not good at it at all. So that's a little bit fiddly. Another variation of that is called the figure-eight cast-on.

I'm gonna move to circular needles. You can do all of these things on either type of needle. But again, figure-eight, you hold on to the yarn, and you wrap between the needle tips. You're still getting two needles ready to go, but you still have some of those similar problems. You're going to have loose stitches on the edge here.

You still don't have purl bumps on the back. So let's forget about those. Because those are kind of annoying, what happened is that there's a knitter in Oregon named Judy Becker, and years back, she was fiddling around because she liked to do toe-up socks, which is where you would use the Turkish or figure-eight, and she figured this thing out. It was called the Judy's Magic Cast-On, and it's widely used. But lest any knitter think that they've discovered something new, as it turns out, the Estonians have been doing this for decades.

And I have this lovely older book here, and "The Two Needle Cast-On" is what they call it, and you can work both directions from it. So once you get the hang of this, you'll be amazed at all the new beginnings and possibilities it will bring to your projects. All right, so let's learn this cast on together, shall we? You're going to need two pieces of yarn, so a ball of yarn and a needle with two tips. And you'll have to have a tail measured out.

If you make it just about as long as your forearm, you'll be fine. So there's your tail. Take your left hand and make a letter C. Put the tail on your top finger- T, top finger, tail. Put the other piece of yarn that goes to the ball on your bottom finger- bottom, ball, bottom finger.

And use these three fingers to clasp tightly on the two strings to control how they flow through your hand. All right, there's our letter C. Take your two needle tips and kind of even them out. You don't want one racing way ahead of the other. So even them up and poke in so that you have a stitch on the top needle.

We're going to take turns putting stitches on the needles. And the kind of stitch we're going to put on the needle is a yarn-over. Let's take just a second to remind ourselves which way a yarn-over goes. If we look at a single needle, a yarn-over starts at the bottom of that needle and goes up and over the top and gives you that left slant. This is the conventional way to do it.

And this is what we are aiming for on each needle. Okay. Back to the real thing. I stopped, so I better check; tail on the top, ball on the bottom, fingers to hold. Poke in so that you have a yarn-over on the top needle.

So now whose turn is it? It's the bottom needle. What kind of stitch? A yarn-over. And where is it going to get it from?

Here's the last bit of this cast-on. Each needle gets its yarn from opposite where it is. So the bottom needle has to reach across the top yarn to put a yarn-over. See, I'm kind of scraping it off my finger. And there's that left slant that we're aiming for.

All right, whose turn is it now? It's the top needle. What kind of stitch? A yarn-over. Where from?

the bottom yarn. Keep it low, bring it up between the two needles and make sure you're wrapping just that top needle. There's our left slant that we're aiming for. And you're good. Those are the two needles, and you keep going back and forth between the two, back and forth.

Sometimes you use your thumb to sort of slide these down. Bottom needle gets a yarn-over from the top. Top needle gets a yarn-over from the bottom. Make sure you return to home. If you start stretching it way out here, you're going to get lost.

So keep things right in the middle of the C. Bottom needle, top yarn. Top needle, bottom yarn. I'll just practice a few more here so you can look at them. Takes a little while to get it.

So let's take a look at the back of our needles a minute. Remember, the other methods did not give you purl bumps on the back. Let's take a peek. I'm gonna roll my needles over here. And there we have these nice purl bumps on the back.

So we're gonna have perfect stockinette in between. All right, let's talk about some things that could go wrong. We alternated needles, and that made our needles connected. If all of a sudden you start wrapping the top needle with the top yarn and the bottom needle with the bottom yarn, you'll notice that your needles are not connected. And that just won't do.

So make sure instead that we are alternating; bottom needle, top yarn, top needle, bottom yarn. Because if you get that going, then you'll see that your needles are connected. The yarns crossed in the back, and you get those purl bumps that you're after. Another thing that can go awry is you might accidentally put two stitches on in a row. It happens.

You get a little goofed up. You get a little lost. Maybe you're crossing them wrong. When you do that, you'll be able to see that there are extra stitches in between the bottoms. These are not alternating, are they?

So then you think, oh, I better take that out. Let me show you how to take things out and to recover. These first few were good, so I'm gonna put my thumb on them, and I'm just gonna sort of pull out until I'm back to where I thought I was good. And now you realize that you've lost track of your high yarn, your low yarn, and you're going to need to restore that. So let's look at this good stitch on the bottom needle.

You say to yourself, the bottom needle has yarn from the top, so you're going to want to put that up high. And the top needle, there's the yarn, trace the yarn. And put them back where they belong so that you don't accidentally goof those up when you're really trying to recover from another mistake. And then if all else fails, you could just start over. Now, practice this a little bit, and if you still can't get it, for some reason it just looks strange to you, and you can't get your hands to do the motions, I want to show you another way to do it where you use both hands.

What you can do is get both hands involved. Put your needle tips kind of facing away from you instead, and get a yarn-over on that right needle, which really would be the top needle. Same thing, right? And then we're going to use the right yarn to cross the left needle. And we're gonna put a yarn-over on that conventional way.

See that left slant. Use your other hand to get a yarn-over here and alternate. This is this same result; just using two hands because some of you might find that more comfortable. Hang on tight. Things get slippery.

So that's just another way to do the same thing. The beauty of this cast-on is that no matter what your knitting style is, you can do it. Now, if you like double-pointed needles, let's make sure that we know what it looks like when we do it onto double-pointed needles. The motions are going to be the same. You have a top needle and a bottom needle.

This is just what we did before with the two needle tips of the circular needle. So you can look at that again if you need to. What is different about it is how you get moving on knitting the first row. So let's just take a look at that. Double-pointed needle lovers are gonna be just fine.

They know how to do this. But you're going to be turning, holding the yarn. Make sure you're not knitting with your tail. And this is the part that's different. On a circular needle, you would extract the needle to get it out of the way.

With double points, we can't quite do that. But since you're so comfy with those double points, you're going to be fine. You can get right in there, knit a stitch. You're more comfortable than I am, obviously, but you can get that stitch off just fine. Okay, and continue from there.

So if it feels kind of tight in there, try experimenting with different needles. The struggle only really happens until you get that first row knitted, and then you're going to have plenty of room to work. So what if you are a combination knitter? Combination knitters like to put their stitches on the needle opposite of what most knitters are used to, which means, instead of that left slant, they're going to slant the other way. It sets them up for knitting into the back.

So I'm going to talk just to you combination knitters right now. When you do Judy's Magic Cast-On, you have every right to put the stitches on the needle the way that suits you. So the first one's going to be the same. You'll just poke in. And now you need to start to think about what way you like those yarn-overs to land on the needle.

You're still going to go opposite. So bottom needle gets a yarn-over from the top finger, but the yarn-over goes on the other way. That is going to suit you much better. Yarn-over the other way. So that once you get knitting on these stitches, you can knit through the back like you like to.

It's a kind of a fun thing for non-combination knitters to realize that none of us are really broken. We just do things in different ways, and it's all just fine. See how I have to stop and think about it? But now you have those stitches on the way that you like them, and you can knit through the back. So next, let's talk about left-handed knitters.

Left-handed knitters, so far, this whole process has looked really strange to you. So let's do it left-handed so that you too know you can do this just fine. I can completely relate to what it feels like because when I try to demonstrate something left-handed, it feels so awkward. So give me a minute to set this up. My needles are going to be in my left hand.

My yarns going to be in my right hand. I still will have a high finger and a low finger. Left-handed knitters, you'll still put the tail on your index and the ball on the bottom and use these three fingers to hang on tight. And so what you see happening here is that I'm doing everything mirror image. And now, there are lots of knitters out there who mirror image their knitting.

Let's give this a try. All right, poke in so that the top needle has a stitch, and do your maneuver so the bottom needle gets a yarn-over from the top, and the top needle gets a yarn-over from the bottom. See how it works? You can totally do it. The reason why this is going to feel a lot nicer to you...

Give me just a minute to put a couple more on. My brain has to kind of go into first gear here to kind of get this done. But that's working. And let's end on the bottom. The reason that's going to work for you is that when you go to knit, you're going to be able to hold the needles in your right hand, draw the bottom needle out, and that's what you're going to be knitting with.

And that's what looks normal to left-handed mirror image knitters. So what are some basic applications of this magic cast-on? One of the most obvious ones is to start a toe-up sock. So I have a few different variations of toes here. These are in your handout if you want to try to practice them.

But let's take a look at where the magic cast-on lands. The first two rows are right in the middle at the very end of that toe. It's perfectly smooth. There's no bumps, and it's invisible. You can't tell where it stops and starts.

The project for this lesson is a pocket. Judy's Magic Cast-On happens at the bottom of the pocket, at the beginning. Then we don't have to seem this. And I like to use these on those days when I'm heading out the door, and I realize I don't have any pockets on my clothes, and I need a place for my phone. So it's just a little project that's fun to do.

We're going to do Judy's Magic Cast-On. A total of 42 stitches, which means 21 on each. You'll find patterns written different ways. If they tell you Judy's Magic Cast-On 42, they let you decide to split them up onto two needles. And if the pattern writer is a little kinder, they'll say it both ways for you, 21 on each.

Okay, so 21, I'm gonna need a little bit of a longer tail. I want to show you, as I do this, how I count my stitches as I go and how I carefully hang on so I don't lose my yarns. Right now, I'm just doing the motions. I'm not counting until I think I'm close. You can use your thumb once in a while to sort of scoot them down the needle.

Okay, I'm gonna count. If you started with the top needle, you should end with the bottom needle. So I know I have pairs on the needle. I'm gonna spread them out a little bit so that I can see them better. And I'm going to count just the top needle until I get to 21.

While I'm doing that, especially if you're a beginner, you might wanna check your other needle. Put your eyeballs on those stitches and make sure that you're doing a good job of alternating. So let's count: 3, 5, 10, 15, 16, 17, 18. I'm not quite there: 19, 20, 21. And notice that when I stop to count, I keep my yarn on my fingers.

You can just hold on like that, go back into position. Hold on, go back into position so that you don't get lost. All right, now here comes the fun part. So far, we've just practiced the cast-on, and we have not yet knitted from this position. So let me show you what that looks like.

Pattern tells you that round one is just knitted, and it's a round. So we're gonna have to be careful not to go flat back and forth. Here we go. Point the needle tips to the right. When you do that, you're going to have the knit side facing up.

Thumbs up, we like that. And the purl bumps on the back are hanging down toward the ground away from you because we're making stockinette stitch. We have to knit this stitch first, and it's kind of a lousy stitch. See how loose it is? It's because it's a yarn-over, and it's a tail, and it doesn't have a buddy on the other side to keep it tight.

So let me show you how to secure that. Grab the tail. See how the tail is that stitch? Clasp it to the back of your work and smash it onto your needles with your hand. See, I'm holding onto it so that when I knit this first stitch, everything's going to be fine.

There's my working yarn. I'm going to extract this, angle it back, and I can knit. Now I'm gonna hold my yarn in my left hand. You can hold the yarn however you like. I'll need some more yarn, won't I?

Let's see here. I'm gonna knit across these stitches on this needle, the first 21, and show you how to turn the corner to get to the other 21. If you're on double-pointed needles, this will look different, but you know how to continue in the round. All right, look at those nice stitches. They're evenly, perfectly tensioned.

They're no loose ones. They look great. Now, let's turn the corner. I'm gonna have to get this needle in here. The yarn is always telling the story of where it was last worked.

See the yarn going to this stitch on this needle? That means it's time to go across the street and continue in the round. I still have knit stitches upward-facing me. So I can say good job. I'm still doing the stockinette stitch, which is the goal.

It's really handy if you're trying to remember if you've finished a round or if you're only halfway through a round; when you get to the end, you'll be back to that tail that's hanging there. And so that will be your cue to let you know you've completed a round. See, there's my tail. It's my marker. All right, I wanna show you something here on something I have a little further out.

Our next round is going to do two things. We're going to make increases on the side so that we can have ribbing, and we're going to do a row of purls in between so that we can help that fabric turn the corner. So this is round two. The kind of increases that we're going to do are KFB knit into the front and back. Look at that.

I almost picked up my tail to knit. We don't wanna do that. All right, a KFB increase, you knit into the front, get into the back of that same stitch, and knit again. And what you've created is an increase that looks like a knit stitch with a purl stitch right next to it, which is handy for us because we're going to be making ribbing, knit-purl, knit-purl. One more of those.

One more knit stitch. Again, refer to your pattern. Purl across to the other side. And we're almost to the other side, where we do a little bit more ribbing again. Knit into the front and back.

And am I finished with that round? No, I still have to do the other side. But you'll do the same thing on the second needle as you did on the first needle. Once that part is done, you have a choice. You can either make a plain version stockinette or something with cables on it.

Suit yourself, make what you like. So mess around with different methods. Try circular, try double-pointed needles, try to find out what feels the most natural for you, and then practice until you feel confident. Also, train your eyes to recognize which way the stitches are oriented on the needle so that you can knit them the way that you like.