Sometimes it’s so easy to fall into habits that we don’t change over time resulting in becoming comfortable or even stagnant in our skills.

For example, I like to cast on new stitches in knitting as if I’m knitting them. That is, I don’t use any fancy cast on methods or use anything other than two knitting needles as if I’m knitting. It’s the only way I learned, and the only way I cast on for every knitting project. It’s no biggie to do this but if you want to improve your craft, you need to challenge yourself a bit and get out of these habits.

When watching professional knitters, they have a variety of different methods that they can recall and use for specific needs. That is, whether they want more or less flexible cast on or simple or fancy ones with picot edges and the like.

I just have the one way – pretty boring – so you can see my problem.

I come across as amateurish. ?

When you want to improve your craft, you need to be constantly learning and experimenting – to the point of never learning your craft.

So on Sunday, I sat down in my comfy chair and pyjamas and put YouTube on the big screen so that I could skill up on some new casting on methods.

First, was the long tail cast on.

This is a typical and popular way of casting on and now I can say that I’ve got that under my belt. Literally took a few minutes to learn that had me wondering, why I kept putting it off all these years. ?

While I was at it, I learned the simple thumb cast on which is way easier albeit a bit looser.

Here’s another video I watched while also going through it with yarn and needles in my hands. I’m a little bit more comfortable now knowing more than one way to cast on.

On an aside, here’s a little project I finished this weekend with some stash yarn. A cloche hat. It’s unlikely I’ll wear this so I’ll put it into my large plastic box of other knitted stuff.

Next skills to learn are some more cast off techniques but I’ll leave that for next weekend.