Tutorial Tuesday: How to do a provisional cast on with a crochet hook

I told you Tutorial Tuesday would be back in July! We will resume our look at using a crochet hook in knitting by learning how to do a provisional cast on with a crochet hook. A provisional cast on is used when you need to later make the cast on stitches live so you can knit seamlessly from the cast-on edge.

Important note: When you do the provisional cast on, you will want to use a smooth waste yarn so it can be "unzipped" easily. The yarn used in this demonstration is Nashua Creative Focus Worsted - a lovely yarn, but probably not the best for the provisional cast on. I used this yarn because the pink would show up well in photos. Were I actually going to do the provisional cast for a knitting project on I would choose a cotton or synthetic yarn.

Step One: Start with a slip knot. This is the same kind of slip knot you would use for the long-tail cast on.


Step Two: Place the slip knot on the crochet hook.


Step Three: Place the knitting needle between the crochet hook and the ball of yarn. The crochet hook should be in front, the ball of yarn should be in back. Keep some tension on the yarn.



Step Four: Make your first cast on stitch. Use the hook to grab the yarn still attached to the ball . . .


. . . and pull it through, so that you have a loop on the needle and a loop on the hook.

Step Five: Place the yarn behind the knitting needle.



Repeat steps four and five until you have the required number of stitches.

Step Six: Secure the yarn. Because you're going to be unzipping this yarn later, you want to keep the yarn in place in a way that is easily un-done later. There are two methods of doing this.

Your first option is to remove the crochet hook and leave an extra-long loop.



The second option, which I think is a little more secure, is to insert a locking stitch marker or safety pin into the loop where the crochet hook was.


Ta-da! There you have it - another use for that crochet hook!