Thankfully in the boiling hot weather I've got a bit more time to sit down and methodically translate the absolute gobbledegook on most websites or tutorial videos about this method of casting on, and finally cracked it last night.
This blog: Long tail cast on | Knitting | WOOL AND THE GANG
...really does summarise it brilliantly, with a video AND a set of photos to show off what it should look like and how to achieve it.
Up till now I'd been using a standard cast-on method (just wrapping the yarn around my finger after making a slipknot, working it onto the needle and that works for the majority of patterns) but I'd heard good things about the long tail cast on method, specifically that it gives you a bit more of a stretchy and elastic hem, which is vitally important if you're obsessed with knitting beanies (like I am).
The toughest bit for me is working out where to place the slip knot. The biggest problem with long tail cast on is knowing how long a tail to leave. Say for example you want to work 74 stitches onto your needle, how on earth do you measure the right amount of 'tail' to leave without wasting yarn?
The method that seems to work for me is to measure the length of the needles, quadruple it, and that somehow seems to equate to just the right number of cast on stitches to fill a standard needle length but I'm sure someone out there with more experience would tell me a more scientific method!
For now though, once learned it's one of those things that you can't un-learn (so with the compartmental way my brain works I've totally forgotten how I USED to cast on!) But it definitely works. As you can see from the photo though, I seriously need to work out how to block out effectively next, my work is always curling in on itself like this.
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