I haven’t found any tutorials for how to work a tubular cast on English style starting from a waste yarn provisional cast on, although there are several good tutorials of other methods: Marnie MacLean has a Twist Collective article here, and Ysolda also covers some methods here. This is a fun technique and everyone should get to play, so here is a tutorial for folks who don’t want to use their left hands so much, for whatever reason.
The overview: start with a provisional cast on with a waste yarn, then work two rows of tubular knitting, then start ribbing.
The big picture trick with the provisional cast on is to imagine that you are picking up and knitting a stitch into a selvage, then making a yarn over, but instead of a selvage, you have a waste yarn. The muscle memory will feel the same and may help dispel the weirdness of the new moves.
Here are the specifics for the provisional cast on with waste yarn:
Hold one end of the waste yarn in your left hand, the other with your working yarn.
*With yarn in back, put your right needle under the waste yarn,
yarn over
pull the loop under the waste yarn
yarn over.
Repeat from * across.
Working the tubular cast on flat:
Cast on an even number of stitches with the Provisional Cast On with Waste Yarn
Row 1: (K1, sl1 across.) turn.
Row 2: (K1, sl1 across.) turn.
Row 3 (K1, p1) across.
Repeat Row 3 until your ribbing is the desired length,
you can pull the waste yarn right out.
Working the tubular cast on in the round:
Cast on an even number of stitches with the Provisional Cast On with Waste Yarn, join into a ring being careful not to twist stitches.
Round 1: (K1, sl1) around.
Round 2: (Sl1, p1) around.
Round 3: (K1, p1) around.
Repeat Round 3 until your ribbing is the desired length, you can pull the waste yarn right out.
Future posts will cover the how to switch from 1/1 ribbing to 2/2; 3/3; and 4/4 ribbing and how to bind all those off.