Picot Cast-on

Hi, I am Mary Beth Temple. And in this video, we're going to learn about the PICO cast on. Now, a lot of us learn the PICO cast on that has the fold in it because that's super easy and it looks terrific, but I don't always want a folded hen that can add a lot of bulk. Additionally, if I'm going to do a PICO bind off, I would prefer the PICO cast on that more closely matches the PICO bind off. And here it is.

So, the first thing I'm going to do is I'm gonna cast on four stitches and I'm going to use the knitted cast on method. So I have my slip stitch is my first stitch. Just a little review of the knitted cast on. I'm going to insert my right hand needle tip as if to knit a stitch gonna yarn over and draw it through. I'm not going to put the stitch off of the left hand needle because this is the cast on.

And I'm going to give that a little twist and I'm going to put that up on the left hand needle. And you may have noticed I had my thumb right in there. I don't want these to be super tight on top of each other. It makes for a very tight cast on which most of us do not appreciate. So once again, I'm going to go into the stitch, begin a knit stitch but do not push it off the left hand needle and twist.

I want my right leg of the stitch facing forward so I can knit it. So I have three stitches, my slipknot and I've done two knitted cast on here is the last one for this section. So now I have four stitches cast on 1234 and they're not super tight on top of each other. Now, I'm going to bind off two. So I'm going to knit the first stitch, knit the second stitch past the first stitch over the second stitch.

So I bound off one. I'm going to knit the next stitch pass the first one over the second one I have bound off too. Now, I'm going to take this stitch from my right hand needle and place it back on my left hand needle with the right leg, facing forward. Everything we do on this cast on, we want the right leg of that stitch facing forward so we can knit into it later. Now, I'm going to cast on five stitches.

We only do the four at the beginning because we want that PICO to be near the edge. So I'm gonna go one, two, remember, not too tight, three, four, five, bind off to knit. The first two stitches pass the first stitch over the second stitch, knit the next stitch, pass the first stitch over the second stitch. Take the stitch from the right hand needle and put it on the left hand needle with the right leg facing forward. So now we have 12345 stitches in our cast on, even though we cast on way more than that because the bind off, there's actually five stitches in the cast on.

Let's do this one more time cast on five with a knitted cast on one, two, three. Here, five, bind off two knit, the first two stitches, one, two, pass the first one over the second one, knit the next stitch past the first one over the second one. Take that lonely little stitch, put it back on the left hand needle with the right leg facing. Let's see how many stitches we have now. 12345.

That's what we had. So for this iteration of the PICO cast on because we are casting on five. But then binding off two, we are adding three stitches every time we make a PICO. So it was 123, four, five, bind off two, let's bind off one, bind off to take our lonely little stitch. Put it back on the left hand needle with the right leg facing forward So that should be 11.

Let's take a look at the sample that I made earlier. Now, I wanted to point out that this stitch count. This stitch variation is not the only way that you can do a PICO cast on. But I wanna talk about what you might wanna change to make it look like what you want to look like for your project. If I want my Picos spread farther apart instead of casting on five, with my needed cast on, I could increase the number I could do six or seven or eight or 10 or 12, whatever number I wanted by increasing that number, the Picos will spread farther apart.

Now, if I want the PICO itself to be longer or thicker, I could bind off more than two stitches, I could bind off three or four, whatever I wanted to do that would increase the depth of the PICO itself. So remember if you wanna change the spacing, if you want to make them farther apart or closer together, you're going to change the number of the knitted cast ons. And if you wanna change the height of the PICO, you're going to change the number of bound off stitches. So now you can make your PICO cast on to match your intended PICO cast off on your knitted project.