Stitches

confused about casting on in knitting?

I am doing the long-tail cast on that i found on youtube... very good instructions. Just curious, though, how many times do I repeat the process??

Public Comments

1. It depends on how big you want your work to be....if you are doing a swatch I usually do like 25 cast-ons just to get an idea of what it will look like. If you have knitting instructions it will tell you how many loops to cast on, as well.
2. It depends on how wide you want your object. For a medium width scarf, you're probably good with 20-25 castings.
3. It depends on how long you want your product to be. If you are making a scarf, then you probably want it about 30 stitches long. If you are following instructions out of a book, then it should tell you how many you need to cast on. *EDIT* It also depends how tight you knitt. If you knit tight, then you want to cast on more. If you knit loosley, then you want to do how many it says. You can try knitting a square or making a swatch to see how you knitt, then kind of decide how many you need to do. Also, make sure you are using the right size of needles. If the pattern says to use a certain size, make sure you use that size. You want to make sure to count your stitches every few rows to make sure you don't lose any. To do this just count the loops on the needle. If you are missing one (or possibly gained one,) then you may have to undo a few rows and go back to where you made the mistake and pick up/drop the extra stitch. Remeber, if it is your first project, don't be upset if you make a lot of mistakes. If you were to look at the first scarf i knitted, it has a lot of mistakes in the first part then they get better. This is normal, you need some time to learn. I hope your knitting goes well!
4. As many times as you need to. If you were using a pattern, you'd cast on as many stitches as the pattern called for (remember, the slipknot counts as a stitch when you're counting cast-on stitches). But if you haven't got a pattern, the number depends on how wide or long you want your project to be.
5. Each manoeuvre makes ONE stitch. You repeat this as many times as you need stitches... according to your pattern. It's spelled out in your directions.
6. you repeat the process until you have as many stitches you need. so you know, each loop equals one stitch.