Foundation cast-on

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Last week, I was playing around with variations on the foundation base chain, and came up with this two yarn version:

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When I looked at that for a while, I started thinking again. The white chain looked like the chain on a bag of pet food. So I unraveled it and stuck the resulting loose stitches on my Tunisian crochet hook. It looked like a cast on.

f5914688-2f5944960-2It was a cast on.

It’s actually nicely stretchy, and you can work it directly onto a knitting needle or afghan hook without the chain across the top!

Here’s how:

  1. With a crochet hook that is, if anything, a little smaller than the crochet hook or knitting needle that will hold your cast-on stitches, chain two. Remove the chain from the hook. (Unless your yarn is very slippery, your last loop shouldn’t come undone. You can make that loop extra large if you need to, though.)

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2. Insert your needle/hook through the back of the first chain,

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3. then through the front of the loose chain. Pull your yarn tight.

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4. The front of the middle chain is now snugged up against the needle/hook, and the back bump is sitting on top.

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5. Insert your crochet hook through the front loop of the chain and the back bump, and pull a loop through.

  1. Chain two, and move the loop on your hook to your needle/hook.

Repeat steps 5 and 6 until you have enough stitches.

The result works quite well as a cast on for Tunisian crochet:

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A lacy cast-on for plain knitting:

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and knitting lace:

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It’s a beautifully stretchy cast on. In my experience so far, it needs to be worked tightly and with a smaller crochet hook than you might expect.

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