Held Double
Published On: June 20, 2019

Flexes fingers…stretches arms…ok, this is all stuff I’ve said before, so totally feel free to skip right over this if you’ve been here a while.  But just in case you’re new, here’s the spiel on the cast on.

Yup, I totally cast on over two needles held together.

Before anyone screams or cries into their tea or sends me worried messages…don’t panic, I know that doesn’t make the cast on any looser or stretchier.  To make the cast on looser, you need more space *between* one stitch and its neighbor. But casting on this way does make each individual stitch a tiny bit *taller*.  And that makes my cast on a better match to the stitches I make on the rest of the project.

See, I’m a pretty loose knitter.  So the loops of yarn I make are a good bit bigger than the needles I make them with.  BUT…for some reason I’m a tight cast-er on-er (no, not a word, but you get what I mean).  So if I just use one needle to cast on, the loops of yarn I make in my cast on would be way smaller than the loops of yarn I make my regular stitches with, and that’s no good.

So, casting on over two needles helps balance them out.  I could get the same result by casting on over one much larger needle.  But that would require digging such a needle out of the needle cage (and runs the risk of inadvertently then using that big needle as I start knitting, which you wouldn’t think would happen, but I can say with certainty that it can).

So, this works for me, and I know how/why it works.  If you knit tightly when you cast on but loosely otherwise, it might work for you too.  But if all you need is for your cast on to be bigger around, then you have to leave more space between stitches instead!

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