so the longtail cast on also known as the Continental cast on and sometimes the double cast on this is a great cast on it creates a firm neat and stretchy cast on edge so it basically has everything that you're looking for in a cast on edge in this particular piece that I made this stocking stitch piece after I did the cast on the first row that I did was the purl side then I went back for the knit side in order to create this stocking stitch piece but how do we make this cast on so you start with a slipknot we've got two pieces of yarn here we have to separate these first so we've got the short piece here this is the tail this is the one that's cut off then we have the other yarn that's the long one that's the one that's going to the ball of young that you're using so the tail goes over your thumb the working yarn goes over your index finger so this is the tail the short piece that goes over the thumb the working yarn goes over the index finger and then I use these fingers here to keep everything nice and tight in this little package so let's make our first stitch first of all we need to bring the needle underneath this yarn on the thumb underneath that one then we take the needle over the top off the yarn on the index finger and then we pull that loop through the yarn on the thumb and that's our first stitch so first of all we go under the yarn on the thumb over the top of the yarn on the index finger and pull that through and over and through so first you go under then we're going to go over the top of this young and then we pull it through this loop so how much should you tighten the stitch once you have it on the needle so at this stage how much should you tighten that we'll have a look here if you can pull these stitches down in there's like a big gap here your stitches are too loose if you try and move your stitches on the needle and you you can't move them it's too tight so you shouldn't really have much gap here at all and your stitches should move fairly fairly easily all right let's go again under over pull under over through so sometimes what I find depending on the yarn that I'm using is that the tail yarn here the one that's over the thumb can sometimes become a little bit untwisted can you see that there's a little bit untwisted so about every five or ten stitches depending on the yarn I'm using all at this tail yarn go and discovered a little bit of a twist again so it gets nice back to the shape that it's supposed to be let's do a couple more this is also quite a quick cast on so you know this custom really has everything going for it and there you have it the long tail Caston