November Guild Meeting Report

First things first! I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend. And congrats to Brooke on her new nephew!

Now, on to the guild meeting report. I am an official member of the guild because I got this when I arrived.


This month's topic was casting on. I got a hand with written directions for 13 different cast ons and their uses. If you've ever tried to learn a new cast on from written directions, you probably know how difficult it is to figure out written directions so the instructor walked us through four of the most common cast ons: the double stitch cast on, the loop cast on, the alternate loop cast on, and the knotted cast on.

The first cast on, the double stitch cast on, creates the same edge as a long-tail cast on, without the long tail. However, it's a lot more fussy.


You put a loop over your thumb, reach up through the loop with the needle, and pull the yarn back though the loop. I know, that doesn't make much sense. And that's not even the tricky part. The tricky part is pulling the stitch tight on the needle and getting all the stitches even. You can watch a video at Knitting Help. (Select the second video.) The method show here is a little different than the way I learned it and, I think, I a little more difficult.

The second method we learned was the loop cast on. I thought I was doing a loop cast on most of the time, but I'm actually doing a backward loop cast on. The difference is very slight, the edge looks very similar, and they are both fun. I'll try to explain them both.



Here is how you do the backward loop cast on:

Wrap the yarn around your finger clockwise.

Put the loop on the needle.

And here is how you do the loop cast on:

Wrap the yarn around your finger counter-clockwise.

Put the loop on the needle.

The pictures aren't the best, but if you look at them carefully, you can see the difference. I took the time to take pictures because the third cast on we learned is the alternating cast on.

This one was also difficult to take a picture of. It looks like two stitches come out of one cast on. Here's how you do it: cast on one stitch with the loop method then one stitch with the backward loop method. Repeat. Try it! You'll like it!

The last cast on we learned is the knotted cast on. This is the cast on that Brooke used for her knitted gansey. This one was definitely my favorite. It's very similar to a picot cast on. Basically you cast on two and bind off one.

It makes a niffy knotted edge. Hence the name.

I know that my descriptions probably aren't the best, but you can probably find good directions somewhere on the internet.

Tomorrow: Project Update.