b's buzz

Link to the iPhone cozy pattern and associated tutorial are now updated.

I always do my toe-up socks with the same tried-and-true cast-on, which I adapted from a doubleknit cast-on from Principles of Knitting. Over the years, I’ve showed a few people how to do this at the Mel-O-Dee, but it’s fiddly. It’s hard to show. Been meaning to document it for awhile. You need to understand a traditional long-tail cast-on to use this method.

1. First, wrap the yarn around a DPN or circular needle as shown, or make a slipknot if you must.
2. Place another DPN or circular needle beside the first one, between the tail and leading yarn, with the tail facing you.
3. Begin a traditional long-tail cast-on putting BOTH needles through the thumb (tail yarn) loop. (Sorry about the crappy pictures here.)
   
4. Using only the farther needle (the one that has the initial loop/slipknot, and also the needle that has the loop leading to the yarn ball), pick up the loop on your forefinger as you would for a long-tail cast-on. (Yeah, another crappy picture.)
5. Using just only the closer needle (the one that leads to the tail yarn), pick up the yarn loop from your thumb.
6. Gently snug up the stitches.
7. When you have cast on sufficient stitches, begin knitting by working the stitches on the needle that came from the ball (not the tail) first. This makes for a neater look than starting with the tail stitches.
8. The last stitch will be fiddly. Be careful to knit into the stitch from left-to-right, front-to-back just like a normal non-fiddly knit stitch, and you won’t get a hole.

There’s a little movie of the cast-on HERE, as well.