by Carrie Schutrick

Created on: June 23, 2010

When it comes time to cast off your first piece of knitting, you may be in a quandry.  Odds are that the person who taught you isn't around to ask, even if you learned from a person in the first place.  Fortunately, casting off is simple, and you don't even have to learn anything new to do it.

Once you're done with all the knitting, you'll be faced with a row of stitches on one needle.  Knit the first two stitches, and pass the first one over the second, dropping it off the needle.  You'll have one stitch on the right needle and all the rest will be on the left.  Congratulations, you've just cast off a stitch.  Knit the next stitch, and pass the older one over it.  Continue in this fashion until you have only one stitch left at all, on the right needle; cut the yarn about three inches (7 cm) away from the work and pass the loose end through the last stitch.

Of course, you can get a little more elaborate.  To start with, you don't have to just knit; if your piece is in ribbing, you can work the knit stitches as knits and the purl stitches as purls for a neater edge.  In garter stitch, casting off in purl from the right side will hide the cast off edge a bit.  And you should make an effort to cast off loosely, especially on pieces like socks where the edge will need to stretch.

For a slightly more decorative cast-off try this: start your row by knitting the first two stitches together.  Take the resulting stitch and put it back on the left needle, then knit it together with the next stitch.  Proceed across, always putting the new stitch back on the left needle.  Eventually you'll have just one stitch left; cut the yarn and pass it through as above.

This is only the most basic of cast-offs.  There are other variations, though a lot of them involve threading the working yarn into a needle and sewing the live stitches-which is kind of a pain in the neck, because you have to estimate at the start how much yarn you're going to need and it's easy to get it wrong.  In the end, anything that keeps the stitches from running works!

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