hi spun cleaners and co-chairs today I'm going to show you how to do the longtail cast on and I have some kind of funny little tricks that I do along the way and I'm gonna share those with you first of all what I do is if I'm working with a worsted weight yarn I take the end of my yarn and I measure from my nose all the way up stretch with my arm outstretched and I usually get about 50 stitches when I'm casting on with a worsted weight yarn and it will be different obviously for everyone because everyone's arms are different lengths but if you want to figure out you know what your length is and how many stitches that would make it comes in really handy so that's a good little trick for you today and then come on around I'm going to start showing you how to how to get started so let's say I'm gonna you know cast on you always want to pull out a little more yarn than you think you might need because the one problem with the longtail cast on is that sometimes when you're casting on you run out of yarn and then you have to start over again which of course isn't very fun it's not the biggest deal but okay so what you're gonna do to start is you're going to do a slipknot and that will be your first stitch so you can make a loop with your yarn and then you can bring the end around and pull it through the loop and pull it up and just flip this right on your needle now that will count as your first stitch so I've had beginners ask me that does that count as a stitch and yes the answer to that is yes it does so let me show you here you're going to have the ball of yarn where you know that the end coming out to the back and then the tail end just toward you here and then what you do is you see the yarn hangs down in a V from the needle and you're gonna pinch your finger your index finger and your thumb together you're gonna slide it through that V and then you open up your fingers and turn your palm and you'll bring those two ends under your fingers too real gently there oops just gently onto your palm and hold them there and then this kind of makes a heart shape with your needle so you can kind of check that and see if you are making a heart shape then what you're going to do is pretend your thumb is your left needle that's what I how I think of it so you're going to go under the loop with your needle over the yarn that's going over your index finger pull it through and then I take my thumb out and I stick it back through and I pull up there's my second stitch I'd my slip stitch and my stitch I just cast it on so no my hands never really come out of the formation there you know I'm holding the yarn excuse me so then you go down under you go over that top strand you pull the yarn through I take my thumb out and I pull it up so I'll speed it up a little bit I go under the loop there over the top round and I pull through so speed it up a little bit and then I'll slow it down so you can kind of get the motion so you're just it's just like a continuous motion once you get it down and arrow is all you kind of have to adjust the yarn there see I'm already getting but just to just cast it on there all right so I'll slow it down one more time so I'm going to stick my fingers through the B open up my hand and turn it slightly bring that needle in between my thumb and my index finger I go under that loop bringing the needle up and over that top pull it through take my thumb out and pull it up so that's how to cast on longtail cast on hope that helps bye