Casting on and casting off

Almost every complaint about a cast-on or a cast-off is a tension complaint. The edge is tighter than the fabric, so the piece is narrower at top and bottom than in the middle, and a hat will not go over a head or a cuff will not go over a hand.

It happens because both operations are performed while paying attention to the mechanics rather than to the tension, and because an edge stitch has nothing either side of it to even it out. The fix is not skill. It is deliberately working both edges looser than feels right, and where that is not enough, using a needle a size or two larger for the edge and then switching back.

• Long-tail — The general-purpose one, and the one to learn first. Firm, tidy, moderately stretchy, and quick once the hands know it. Its one awkwardness is that you have to estimate the tail length before starting, and running out means starting again.
• Knitted-on — Easier to learn because it uses the knit stitch you are already learning, and it needs no tail estimate. Looser and less tidy than long-tail, which for a first dishcloth does not matter at all.
• Cable — A variant of the knitted-on that produces a firmer, cord-like edge. Useful where the edge will take strain.
• A stretchy cast-on — A family of methods that produce an edge stretching as much as rib does. What you reach for when a cuff or a sock top has to go over something wider than itself.

For a first project, either of the first two is fine and the choice does not matter. What matters is learning one of them well enough that it is not an obstacle every time you start something, because a cast-on you dread is a cast-on that stops you starting.

The standard cast-off works by knitting two stitches and passing the first over the second, repeated. It is the one nearly everybody uses and it suits nearly everything.

Two rules go with it. Work the stitches as the pattern does — knit the knits and purl the purls — because casting off a rib in plain knit produces a hard edge that fights the stretchy fabric underneath it. And go loose, for the reason in the first section. A stretchy cast-off is worth learning at the point where you knit something that has to go over a head, and not before.