- Welcome back to lesson two.
Today we are getting the yarn on your loom.
We'll be showing you three different ways.
Plus, how to make a slip knot in different ways.
(slow piano music)
Welcome to GoodKnit Kisses.
We're all about helping you stitch your love
and love your stitches.
So we're gonna be putting the yarn on the loom today,
making slip knots, and then making three different cast-ons.
But first, I wanna go over the supplies that I'm using
that most people will have in their stash.
Usually people can find things like this in the store,
it's a 24-peg loom.
This is a Knifty Knitter brand which isn't made anymore,
but there are a ton of them out there.
There's 24 pegs, and they're spaced,
from middle of one peg, center peg to center peg,
5/8 of an inch when you measure it.
It's about five and a half inches across,
or 14 centimeters. That's roughly the same.
So there are different brands that make them.
Without mentioning all the brands,
they're just different colors.
I'm gonna use the one that's same spacing in a similar peg.
I'm gonna use this one because it's lighter in color
and you can see the yarn more clearer.
I think it's gonna be a little dark here.
And this is the KB Looms 36-peg 5/8 gauge
in their Chunky loom set.
For the yarn, I'm gonna be using
a super-bulky six-weight yarn.
This is from Premier Everyday, and it's a super-bulky six.
Some other yarns that would be appropriate
are Bernat Softee Chunky,
which is a five-weight yarn.
There's also Bernat Beyond, which is a six-weight yarn.
So all these are kind of appropriate,
and stick with the light-colored yarn.
All right, let's begin working some slip knots.
So, in order to get your yarn on your loom.
And you can notice, I don't have
a starter peg or anchor peg,
and we did talk about that in the previous series.
So, if you missed all the overview stuff
and you have questions, be sure to refer to that first
and make your comments down below.
Okay, so I tie my slip knot, the easiest way I think,
is just a wrap it around your finger twice.
So I've got my tail, and I wrap it around twice.
And then, now I take the back part coming from the ball,
which is the working yarn.
I take that and go right over the first loop here,
over my finger just a little bit.
Now I'm gonna pull that loop here, which is now at the back,
and put it up and over the end of my finger.
And when I pull on this yarn here,
this yarn tail and this part here with the working yarn,
it gets tighter on my finger.
And that's what I take and I place on the loom,
and that will be my starting peg.
And I can just pull that and cinch it up
not too terribly tight, but enough to where
it doesn't come off the loom or get to snug.
And then I can just tuck the tail underneath,
and I'm ready to go starting my first cast-on.
Let's do a couple of other slip knots. We'll do two more.
Okay, let's do another one,
and this just takes place on the table here.
We're gonna take our tail,
pull out a nice length and make a loop.
Just put it right on top of itself.
Then we're gonna pick up that big loop
and place it on top of our tail, just like that,
and it makes kind of a pretzel look.
Okay, now you're gonna pick up
this bottom part where the tail is,
and you're just gonna pull on
the two strands coming from it, just like that.
So, one is the tail and one's coming from ball,
we call that the working yarn.
And then, just pull on one of the strands, make it smaller,
and you got yourself a slip knot
to put right onto your loom.
The next one I wanna show you
is going right on top of your loom
and you can get to work immediately.
So, you may end up deciding you like this one the best.
It depends on which yarn you're using.
It works better for some than others.
I've never shown this on camera before, but let's do it.
So, just pull a tail through four to six inches,
and start by wrapping the peg twice
that you want to be peg one.
I'm gonna go in this direction to the right.
I'm gonna go between two pegs,
go backwards to the left, wrapping,
and then we'll do it one more time so we've wrapped twice.
And I'm just gonna hold on to both the tail
and the back of this one here.
Now, I'm gonna go underneath this bottom strand here,
so this bottom loop,
and I'm going to put my hook right on this groove
and then push down.
And then we're just making a loop
where you're sliding and pulling this loop out.
Then you're just gonna lift up and over,
and that's what we call knit over.
So we're just gonna lift up and over,
and then we're gonna pull on our tail.
And when we pull on our tail and actually tightened this up,
and we made a slip knot right there.
That's it, that's all you do
and you are ready to begin casting on.
All right, let's begin by double e-wrap cast-on.
So we're going to double e-wrap cast-on,
and it starts with a slip knot on your first peg.
And all you do is, just like the method before,
I'm just going to e-wrap the peg so it makes a cursive E,
and that's really why we call it e-wrap.
So it's kind of upside down.
If you imagine an E that's cursive, it looks like that.
That's why it's called an e-wrap.
See, just like that. It goes up and around here.
So, e-wrap that peg.
You wanna hold on to that tail in the back,
e-wrap the peg and knit over.
Just lift up and over.
And then, your next peg,
you're gonna do the same thing, you're gonna e-wrap.
But you're gonna do it one more time.
So, it's a double e-wrap. E-wrap that peg twice.
Remember, we already had the slip knot
that already formed a knit stitch on it,
'cause you actually worked it on that last slip knot.
So now, here we're just taking the lower loop
and pulling it up and over.
And then we pull on our working yarn,
working yarn coming from the ball.
When we pull on that, what it does
is it tightens up the stitch in between,
and then we won't have too loose of a loop here.
Now we're just gonna e-wrap the next peg twice. One, two.
And that's all you do to cast-on.
It's great, 'cause you can just continue
to work in one direction.
And then, when you're ready to begin knitting,
we're gonna work in the opposite direction.
And that'll be on the next video for knitting,
all the knit stitches.
All right, so I'm gonna begin to show you
how to do a different cast-on.
Let's take this off and make another slip knot,
and we'll meet you back when you get your slip knot on.
Pause your video and I'll see you in a minute.
Now we're going to do the e-wrap/flat cast-on.
There are some patterns that just say wrap the pegs,
and then you work the first row flat.
And this is really what we're gonna be doing here.
If you look at my overview series,
it doesn't actually show this one.
What it does show is working an e-wrap
all the way down and all the way back.
And this is very similar,
except it makes a nice tighter cast-on.
And as a beginner, you want a nice cast-on
instead of having it just really big
in loops on the end of your work.
So what we do is, I've already got our slip knot on here,
and we're just going to e-wrap just like you did before,
but just e-wrap one time,
and go all the way down until you get as many stitches
as you intend to have for your project.
And we'll talk about that more in our next lessons,
but for now, you just e-wrap as many as you need.
And then, you're going to turn and come back,
and we're going to hold the yarn above our pegs
and we're going to flat knit.
So, we'll talk more about this stitch in another video.
But this is how we're gonna do this cast-on.
Gonna go down here to the end and lift up and over.
So yes, this very last stitch is going to get wrapped twice.
So, lift up and over,
and then pull on that yarn.
It's especially important to go ahead
and pull on that stitch for the very first one,
because it needs to be tighter.
Lift up and over on the next stitch and knit that.
Make sure you got all of your strands of your yarn.
And then go to the next one.
Now if you notice, I'm not pulling really tightly.
If I do that, it stretches this stitch right here.
I just gently lay it on top, lift up and over,
and let it fall to the back.
Do it again, lift up and over.
And as you can see, when I pull to the back,
this pulls the yarn slightly to the back.
And just continue doing that until you get back to peg one,
and you're ready for knit stitches.
So, I'm gonna go ahead and take this off the loom.
When we come back we'll do another slip knot,
or have that already on there.
Pause your video and we'll do the last cast-on.
See you in a moment.
This last cast-on is called a chain cast-on.
You see it in a lot of patterns.
It's actually much easier than you think,
but there's a couple of ways to do it.
So I'm actually gonna show you two ways to do it.
One is using your fingers and one is using the crochet hook.
Be sure and stay tuned after this,
because I'm gonna talk just for a few minutes
on a little bit of troubleshooting for cast-ons.
So we'll begin by making our slip knot.
Rewind if you need to do that.
Got a nice size stitch here, or slip knot.
I'm gonna keep it larger, because I'm going to need
to pull some yarn through here.
So we're gonna do this with our fingers here.
Put your tail on the inside.
And I've got my working yarn on the outside of my loom.
So this is the outside of my loom and this is the inside.
And now I'm going to go in this direction,
and I'm going to put my slip knot between the next two pegs
just like this, and then I want to feed
this yarn from the ball through this little hole.
So I'm going to kinda pinch it and pull from the back here.
I'm gonna hold on to this tail here for the first stitch
and kinda pull on this yarn.
And once I got it in there nice and secure,
I'll show you what it looks like.
So from the back, before I make this smaller,
you can see that I have this nice little teardrop shape.
See it looks like a little teardrop? It's a chain.
And then I have two pieces coming out of it,
and next time we do it it's going to make
another chain on the inside.
So let's come around here and go ahead,
and now your hole is much bigger.
You can make it smaller by pulling on it,
or you can leave it that size to work with it,
and just go ahead and pull in some more yarn
and pull tight like this. Just kinda pull on there
and it leaves you another one of these little chains here.
You can do it from the inside here
and push it through like this,
and you can see how it moves the yarn.
And see how it just gets bigger?
Go ahead and pull on it to make it smaller.
Once you get going, it's much faster.
Once you get used to it.
So, see how that goes?
You can also go in the opposite direction.
So, I'll do that in a moment here.
Once it's complete and you got
all the stitches on here you want,
you're just going to place your loop
right on there and cinch it up,
and you've got a nice ending to your chain cast-on.
If you end up making this all the way around,
there's another method for it,
but we'll talk about that in another lesson
when we talk about knitting in the round.
All right, so go ahead and take this off.
Go ahead and make another slip knot.
And I'm gonna go in the opposite direction.
So I'm gonna put my, whoops,
slip knot in this other hand,
and we're gonna go in this direction here.
So I'm gonna have my slip knot in between the next two pegs,
and then I'm just gonna pull it through.
And the first stitch is always a little bit more fiddly.
There we go, we've got it.
And it's the same technique.
This is what it looks like from the back.
Like that.
And it still does the stitch
with this v-shaped or chain stitch.
So let me pull this off, and I'm gonna show you
what it looks like using a crochet hook.
I had told you to have a crochet hook.
If you've got one, we'll do it.
If you don't, you can use your fingers.
And on smaller looms, it's easier with a crochet hook.
Hold on one moment.
So here's my crochet hook.
We're gonna go on the inside,
'cause this is where my loop is,
and put my hook where we want to go.
So, I've got my yarn coming out here,
and then we're gonna go in this direction.
So we put the hook where we wanna go.
And then, we're gonna take our yarn and go around the hook,
and then we're gonna pull through.
So, this thing right here, this is called a yarn-over.
When you wrap the yarn over and around something
and then you just pull it on through.
And we're just gonna pull it through this little hole here.
And of course, I'm using my other fingers back here
to hold onto the tail.
You may not be as coordinated as that, I understand.
You can hold onto it and hold it against the loom,
you can set it down on something else.
I know I was a lot more fiddly with it
when I was a beginner. It's okay.
You can hold it however you need to.
I'm not gonna hold this fancy this time.
I'm just gonna let it sit there,
and then I'm gonna go around, yarn over with my hands.
So just yawning it over.
And then, pinch and hold it,
and then we're gonna pull through.
See, I do it by naturally now.
But let's hold the tail and this part,
now that it's wrapped over.
Let's just hold 'em like this,
like you might do it the first time,
and then just pull that on through that loop.
And you see how it made that loop there?
And just go on to the next one.
I'm gonna show you what it looks like how I normally do it.
Once you get going, you can actually
chain cast-on this fast.
So, this is a great way to do your cast-on.
And then, just set it on top
and you're ready to begin your knitting.
Okay, so we've come to the end,
we've made our three cast-ons,
you're ready to start your knitting.
That will be in the next lesson,
but let's talk for a moment about tension.
The word tension is how tight or loose that you work.
So, if you look at your cast-on and you see
that they're nice and even and consistent, that's great.
But you can also pull on the yarn after you make a stitch
and ease up that tension,
or you can come back here and try and get
as much yarn slack out of here,
and then come on to the next stitch,
and then come on to the next stitch
and then pull on that there,
so that you've gotten rid of some of the extra slack.
And that's a way that you can play with it,
so that when you're knitting starts coming off a loom
it doesn't get loopy.
You're not gonna be able to tell this
immediately for a while, until you've started
your journey in loom knitting a bit more.
But I wanted to have this in this video,
so when you come back to this video later,
you can see how I played with it
and then just kinda made the stitches smaller or bigger.
So, if I wanna make the stitches bigger,
I can come to the end here where the working yarn is
and get a little bit more yarn in it.
Come over here, get a little more yarn here,
a little more here, a little more here.
And this technique is handy because,
if you were way too tight on your cast-on
and I said, "Okay, now make your knit stitches,"
and you're like, "Oh my gosh, I wrapped this part too much
"and my cast-on's too tight," this is how you can fix it.
So you just come down here.
Again, if I need more and I don't have enough for down here,
come down to the end, pull on it,
and then I hold it with my finger,
and then I pull on the next one
and then hold this part with my finger,
pull on the next one.
And sometimes I have to use my other hand here.
And then, just start pulling on the slack
and getting that slack out of there,
and make these stitches looser.
And get that extra yarn all the way down to the end.
You just play with it.
So, that's how you can make sure
if your stuff is too tight or too loose, and you can fix it.
The tightness that we just talked about,
that's usually the part that most new loom knitters will do.
They tend to be too tight on their tension.
And you need to have a way to loosen those things up.
Don't worry about it if you're too tight of a knitter.
Some people are too loose.
And yeah, you'll just have to intentionally say to yourself
to pull it a little bit more snug every time,
pull each stitch.
But if you're a tight loom knitter, don't be afraid of it.
You could break a peg if you go way too tight.
So, if it starts feeling tight and stiff,
go ahead and pull out your work
and rip it out and do it again.
I'm a big believer in taking those things out,
so that you learn what happened
and you become a better knitter.
So, I want you to practice those three cast-ons
a few extra times.
And then, the next time we see each other
we'll start working on our knit stitches,
and you will just use whichever cast-on that you prefer.
There is no right or wrong answer here.
Be sure to click on the next video link in the description,
and subscribe with notifications
for new lessons with the bell icon
so that you know when the next video comes out.
We also have more information on our website.
I can't wait to see you in the next lesson.
(slow piano music)
Thanks for joining us today,
where we help you stitch your love and love your stitches.
See you again soon.