Tighten Up Your Figure-eight Cast-on

Did you know that you can tighten up your figure-eight cast-on? I didn’t realize it the first few times I used this cast-on method for toe-up socks, and my cast on, although tight at the time I was casting on, was actually loose once I knitted away from those cast-on stitches. The row of stitches (the cast-on stitches) at the tip of the toe looked about twice as tall as the rest of the stitches on the sock, and it wasn’t pretty.

See how the line of stitches in the middle of the toe (the cast on stitches) are wonky compared to the rest of the stitches?

I was just experimenting when I tugged on the tail from my cast-on and found that I could actually take out the slack. So I set to work, working from right to left (from the beginning of the round toward the end of the round, counter-clockwise, if you will), pulling the slack out of each leg of each cast-on stitch with a DPN until they all had the same tension as and looked like normal stitches. It worked!
 

Working from right to left, pull on each leg of each cast-on stitch to take out the slack. Then pull on the cast-on yarn tail to pull out the slack on the final stitch.

See the difference?

It's looking much better already.

* I apologize for the bad color on the photos.  The lighting was worse than I thought!