Alternate Cabled Cast On Method

I’ve never been particularly fond of the Cabled Cast On. My stitches always seemed to be too tight or too sloppy after I had gotten 3 or 4 stitches in. Because of that I didn’t expect to like the Alternate Cabled Cast On, but I thought that I should give it a try anyways.

It ended up being my favorite of all the stretchy COs I tried. There was no tail to estimate, the edge is attractive, my stitches didn’t get tight or sloppy like with the regular Cabled CO, and most importantly it was stretchy! My swatch went from 2 inches to 4.5 inches along the cast on edge and it snapped back into shape with no problem. I love it.

There is one downside to this CO method, though. It biases slightly. That doesn’t seem like a big deal to me because the columns of ribbing straighten out after a few row, but I can see how that might be unattractive to some people. The biasing could be a problem on some projects, but I don’t think it would be noticeable on most.

This concludes my little series of stretchy CO methods. Next week I’m going to start looking at stretchy BO methods. I have a list of BOs to work with, but if there are any methods that you’d like to see me try, I’m open to the suggestions!