Cast on as row one

I was watching a program on my public tv network and they were showing different cast on methods. They said that the cast on should be treated as row 1 of your knitting and it would be the wrong side row.
Is this correct?

That’s been a debate among knitters. I’ve always considered the cast on as the cast on only, and the next row as row one. Most patterns are written that way.

Technically, though, if you’re working stockinette, you could consider the cast on as a knit row and work a purl row second.

In the end, I don’t think it matters much, though.

It confused me, because I never counted the cast on as a row.
thanks

I never have either. I’ve always used LT cast on (which is the one that [I]supposedly[/I] ‘knits’ the first row, but it doesn’t really) and started the next row as written. Patterns don’t count the cast on as a row, no matter which one you use. Now you may choose to do a WS row first with the LT, instead of a RS row, but that’s more how it looks to you, rather than any ‘rule’ about knitting.

[FONT=Arial Narrow]I don’t really consider the cast on the first row either, just because I’m still new to knitting and always use the backward loop method, which makes a kind of ugly cast-on row that I later like to put a border around to hide the ugly holes…[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial Narrow]…however, I just learned the long tail cast on, and I DO consider that to be the first row, because you’re basically knitting a row onto your needles using your fingers.[/FONT]

I’ve always considered the cast on to be simply the cast on. Just always made the most sense to me I suppose.

I don’t count it either. I don’t think most people do in my experience.

This depends on your pattern. Yes, you can treat it that way but if the pattern ignores the cast-on row, then you’ll get all messed up. Most, if not all, patterns seem to ignore it, though. If this were a perfect world and knitting patterns were actually written so you didn’t have to guess half of it, you could probably do this… :roflhard: