alright I'm going to show you how to cast on for circular knitting what you need is the yarn that you're going to use for your project and the circular needle that you've chosen to work with your project so I'm going to be doing the longtail cast on you can feel free to do any other cast on that you want or that your pattern calls for whatever you're most comfortable with and if you need help with your longtail cast on we do have a video just about that so I've got the working yarn towards me and the ball away from me and I've started with a slipknot so I'm just gonna go ahead and cast on just like I normally would for straight needles keeping it nice and loose because unlike straight needles there's a join in circular needles there's this little bit where the cable connects to the needle and if you're a really tight cast or honor this is where that's going to not serve you very well because the needles have to or the stitches have to be able to slide over that joint so keep your cast on nice and loose this is you're making fabric not knots so I always tell my beginning knitters to keep their cast on nice and loose as if they were making the fabric they would want to wear on their skin you want to make sure that you've got a needle that is short enough so that your stitches can comfortably reach from point to point we never want to stretch our stitches so I know that with this yarn what I'm casting on for fits really well on a 16 inch circular and that's what I've got so here are all my stitches as I have just cast them on and you can tell that they're a little twisty a little wonky and that's natural because my hands have been all over them but what I want you to see is that the stitches comfortably reach from point to point if I had fewer stitches on here like if the pattern called for let's say this many stitches to be cast on I would not feel comfortable stretching my stitches out that far so whatever cast on you choose whatever needles and yarn you choose just make sure that you have enough stitches to reach comfortably from point to point and next you need to know how to join to knit in the round which we'll show you in the next video