Zen Knitting

Hey David,
After I cast on…I either have too much or too little tail yarn…what should I do?
Thanks,
Carl

I found the difficulty was exactly how long to make the tail? It happened several times that even though I had made a fairly long tail, it was still too short and I had to cast on all over again.

Now I wrap the yarn around the needle ten times before starting and measure the length, then measure this length as many times as necessary to get the correct number of stitches andI am never caught short again.
And I always cast on on TWO needles this way it’s easier to knit the first row.

Brilliantly helpful. Thank you for a very easy to follow guide.

Very helpful. Thanks so much for sharing:-)

Ahhh ok, that makes since now. I learn a weird way of doing the long tail cast on, and it left the stitches all loose and weird when I started my new row. Thanks for the thorough tutorial And kudos to you and other men who knit!

The easiest way to deal with the remaining tail from a long tail cast on is to work it into the first stitches of your next row, then cut it off.
Once you turn your needles around to begin the row after your cast on row, simply hold both strands of yarn together, knit or perl as normal, only wrap both strands around your right needle instead of just the working yarn. Pull both through, let the loop fall off the left needle, and repeat two more times. Then abandon the tail and continue

Deathmonkey: If you were a man you wouldn’t talk.

thanks so much for making this so easy!

another male who knits here…Been knitting for years.

Hi Nadia–you cut what’s left of the tail down to about 5 or 6 inches and then weave it into the work. My two comments directly above yours give some tips on how to do this. Good luck!

The second approach I use, for garter stitch and, with a slight variation, for stockinette–is to again bring the yarn to the backside but this time to pull it up a few rows through the loops in the back, then weave it up and down through one row of loops and back through the loops on the row below, and then snip the end. Don’t pull the tail tight. If you do this at the right tension, the tail will be almost unnoticeable.

There are other ways out there–just google ‘weaving in yarn tails’.

Thanks for this information, just discovered your videos. They are easy to follow and your instructions make it easy to follow. Do you have anything on weaving in the tails?

The general rule is approximately three times the width of what you are knitting. So, for example, a scarf six inches wide should start with a long tail of about 18 inches. Another popular calculation is one inch for every stitch. I would pick whichever is longest and use that. Personally, I almost always add an extra 8 to every long tail because I’m neurotic