Recently, I’ve been teaching my friend Susie to knit.  She’s a great student, in large part because she’s knit before, not to mention she crochets already (including teeny tiny crocheted bracelets made with quilting thread and #11 seed beads).  As I do with most new knitters, I first taught her the knitted-on cast on, because it uses the knit stitch.  This means the new knitter doesn’t have to learn some bizarro two-strand loopy thing in order to have a nice, firm cast-on row. (I never teach the backwards-loop cast on as a first cast on, because new knitters invariably stretch it out and get very discouraged.)

Susie, having finished her first project (legwarmers for her little girl), wanted to learn a stretchier cast on for the second pair.  Enter the Old Norwegian Long Tail Cast On, aka the Twisted German Cast On!  (The latter name always makes me think the Germans are kinky… ) I showed Susie how to do it, and made up a little set of words to say while doing it.  She said it made sense to her, and wished there were a video … so without further ado, this video is for you Susie!