Provisional cast on, casted!

I needed to learn a provisional cast-on for Rogue, since I'm planning to knit the hem stitches together with the body stitches a few rows in. I tried a method detailed in one of my knitting books, where you pick up loops from under and over your waste yarn, but I couldn't keep track of my stitches! It might work well for shorter cast-ons, but 176 stitches? No way!

I'd get a good rhythm going with it, then have to stop to check my progress, and then forget where in the process I was. So then I just knit a few rows with waste yarn and switched over. That wasn't great either, because my waste yarn seemed to have a much different tension than my project yarn. So I ripped it out again, and went for the crocheted provisional cast on.

Instead of picking up the bumps on the back of the chain, you make the chain over the needle, and your stitches are all ready to go.

Next up, knitting the hem!

Fear of knitting

So I've got my tower of Ireland yarn, my pattern all printed out, my needles set and ready to go, my practice cables done to satisfaction, and I'm still not casting on!

I'm terrified of starting this project for some reason. I think I'm afraid of it being a big mess... I know I'm going to need a couple hours to get through the casting on and the hem, and maybe into the first few rows of cabling. Next time I've got that sort of time free, I've just got to sit down and start it. This is so silly.