The Mad Provisional Cast On Skillz Continue to Elude Me

The provisional cast on is an incredibly useful thing. I've always done it by holding two needles and a piece of waste yarn together and then making figure 8s with the working yarn around the two needles and the waste yarn. The loops around the waste yarn become the live stitches that you pick up when the appropriate time comes. It gets the job done but it's a pain in the neck if you're casting on a significant number of stitches and it lacks the WOW factor. The cool kids all do their provisional cast on by crocheting a chain and then picking up and knitting the loops on the wrong side of the chain. Then they "unzip" the live stitches by pulling on the open loop at the end. What fun! The thing is, I can never get it to work for me. I pick up the wrong loop or the chain gets twisted so it doesn't unzip nicely and I end up having to cut and then pick little pieces of the waste yarn out of the live stitches so it ends up taking longer then the figure 8 method. Stupid, stupid provisional cast on.