Technique Stitch
Provisional Cast-On
Used For
- Toe-up socks
- Scarves worked from the center out
- Grafted hems
- Anywhere you need to pick up live stitches later
A temporary cast-on that can later be removed to expose live stitches, for working in either direction.
Instructions
- Using a smooth, contrasting waste yarn and a crochet hook, chain several stitches more than the number your pattern calls for.
- With your working yarn and a knitting needle, pick up and knit one stitch through the back bump of each waste-yarn chain, until you have the required number of stitches.
- Continue your project as normal from these live stitches.
- When you're ready to work in the other direction, unpick the waste-yarn chain one stitch at a time, placing each freed live stitch onto a needle as you go.
Tips & Notes
- Use a smooth, tightly plied waste yarn in a contrasting color — fuzzy yarn or a color too close to your working yarn makes the chain much harder to unpick later.
- Chain a handful more stitches than you need; the first and last stitches of a crochet chain are often unreliable to pick up from.
- This cast-on is what lets projects like toe-up socks or center-out scarves be extended in both directions from a single starting row.