• Doing the Double-Point Four-Step Cast-On (Hyphen-Phobic: Beware!)
• The Juggler's Nightmare
• I-Cord to the Rescue
• The Magic-Loop Method
• The Lesson: You Know More Than You Think

I-Cord to the Rescue

We soon discovered that joining the last cast-on stitch to the first of the series was the problem point. If the stitches remained on the needle, they became twisted and refused to behave politely. I tried another approach. Since we had only those few stitches, I tried beginning the next round as if I were starting an I-cord, and then I pushed the cast-on stitches to the right-hand side of the double-point needle, tugging the yarn behind the stitches as I did so. It was easy to knit the first two on that needle, mark the first stitch, and then move on to the next two stitches with another needle. Around we went until all four of the needles had two stitches, each odd-numbered stitch had a marker pin in it, and we were ready for the next row. This solution would not work well with many stitches in a cast-on. When beginning a top-down sock pattern, for instance, there are plenty of stitches to allow knitting in the usual way.