Casting on for double knitting

(This is part of a series of tutorials relating to double knitting, which started with 'About double knitting', went on to 'Ribbing in double knitting', continued with 'Double knitting in the round', and concluded (at least for the moment) with this post.)

I'm emerging briefly from my deluge of deadline knitting (not sure at this point whether I'm going to bang out my cousin's baby blanket in time for the shower, but at least I can report that two of my magazine designs are out the door) to answer a question about double knitting. I've had a number of requests lately (although perhaps they're all from the same person?) to explain how I cast on for double knitting.

First off, if you want to cast on for a closed tube in double knitting, I did up a video for that a while ago as informational support for my KWB/TSF Hat pattern:

But if you're looking for a regular type of cast-on, there are actually a multitude of different ways to do it for double knitting, but my favourite - and what I've been using religiously ever since I found out about it - is the one demonstrated by Alasdair Post-Quinn in this video. Obviously, video is worth about a gajillion words, but if you prefer something you can read, I've written up a pictures-and-text tutorial on how to do it, which you can access a number of ways:

1. It's part of my (free) Down with Pigs pattern or my ($3.99) Teddy for Tots pattern
   
2. Knit Now published it on their website when they published my Stippling baby blanket pattern in their issue #17
   
3. I'm duplicating it in this blog post. :)
   

Double knitting cast-on

This cast-on is extremely similar to the long-tail cast-on, except that instead of the two strands used being the working yarn and a long tail (as they would be for a regular long-tail cast-on), your two strands will be C1 and C2. The other difference is that although half of the stitches are created in the usual long-tail way, the other half are created backwards from that usual way.

Step 1

Make a slip knot with the two colours together (see fig.1). Note that this slip knot is just temporary, in order to keep the yarn in place as you start casting on stitches – you will be undoing it later on.

fig.1

Step 2

Hold C1 around your thumb and C2 around your index finger as you would for a long-tail cast-on (see fig.2).

fig.2

Step 3

Move needle through the thumb loop by going under the left strand left-to-right (see fig.3).

fig.3

Step 4

Move needle through the index finger loop by going under the left strand right-to-left (see fig.4).

fig.4

Step 5

Pull strand that you’ve just captured from the index finger loop through the thumb loop by going under the left strand of the thumb loop right-to-left (see fig.5).

fig.5

Step 6

Drop loops from thumb and index finger and pull two strands snugly to create a C2 stitch (see fig.6).

fig.6.

Step 7

Resume holding C1 around your thumb and C2 around your index finger exactly as you did in Step 2.

Step 8

Move needle through the index finger loop by going under the right strand right-to-left (see fig.7).

fig.7

Step 9

Move needle through the thumb loop by going under the right strand left-to-right (see fig.8).

fig.8

Step 10

Pull strand that you’ve just captured from the thumb loop through the index finger loop by going under the right strand of the index finger loop left-to-right (see fig.9).

fig.9

Step 11

Drop loops from thumb and index finger and pull two strands snugly to create a C1 stitch (see fig.10).

fig.10

And then...

Repeat Steps 2-11 until you have the desired number of stitches. Undo the slip knot and slide it off the needle once all the stitches have been cast on.

HTH!