Now that others have admitted to knitting in the nude during our New York heat wave, I feel I can show you what I was up to last weekend. Seriously, folks, it was far too sweltering outside to do anything but sit in front of an air conditioner or a fan or both, wearing as little as possible. You might feel the situation is not, therefore, conducive to allowing wool within fifteen feet of one’s body, but we all know how rational knitters aren’t. And all that immobility did seem like a good opportunity to finish planning my dad’s gansey. I’d been putting off casting on because I wanted to try all that tubular business and I knew it was going to take a good chunk of time, especially for a garment with 236 stitches per round. I had the pattern, I had the time…

Yes, friends, that is a genuine tubular cast-on. And it isn’t as tricky as you might think. It works roughly like this: Grab a set of needles 2 or 3 sizes smaller than you’ll need to get gauge for the project. (I’ll be knitting the gansey on US#6s, so I used 4s.) Cast on half the number of stitches you need in a smooth waste yarn. Purl one row, and then knit an elongated row (wrapping twice around the needle – pick up only the first loop on the next row). Then purl a row with the regular yarn and work three more rows in stockinette. Now the fun begins: use a skinny little needle (I used a little #1 circ) to pick up the bumps of main yarn you can see between the elongated waste-yarn stitches. Now you have the full number of stitches, but on two different needles. For a 2 x 2 rib, using the free larger needle (#4), purl two stitches from the large needle, then knit two stitches from the skinny needle. Then purl two more from the large needle, knit two more from the small needle, etc. Continue across the row, and on the next row, switch to the needles you’ll use for the body of the project (#6). Now you can snip out the waste yarn. Voila! A smooth, tubular edge!

It’s fun, I tell you. Takes a lot longer than a regular cast-on, but it makes the niftiest little rolled edge. Try it today – clothing is optional!

*I can’t wait to see the hits I get from Google with this title…