Just to be clear
By JC | November 16, 2011
A couple weeks back I talked about the notion that you can get a looser cast-on edge by casting on over larger needles or over two needles held together. Nope, not true, I said, not for a long-tail cast-on: you get big, sloppy stitches but the tail yarn limits the cast-on edge’s ability to spread out:
big, sloppy stitches shown in dark green;
too-tight tail yarn shown in orange
But get rid of the tail yarn, and the picture changes. Casting on over larger needles does give you a looser cast-on edge if you use a single-strand cast-on technique, such as the knitted cast-on or the backward-loop (aka e-wrap or half-hitch) cast-on. Consider the backward-loop cast-on:
needles of normal size...
...produce a reasonable cast-on edge
larger needles...
...produce a looser cast-on edge
Larger needles produce looser loops, but that’s kind of the point here. That extra yarn translates into more “give” along your cast-on edge.
Bottom line: whether using larger needles will give you a looser cast-on edge depends on the type of cast-on. Single-strand cast-ons? Yup. Two-strand, like the long-tail cast-on? Not so much.
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