Knitting is quickly becoming a fairly popular hobby and with it being the perfect time of the year to pick it up, I’ve put together a little guide for everyone hoping to make their first knitting project this season. When I first started knitting, I had no idea what to do. I eventually got a pattern and then had to google every step, every stitch, and it was fairly time consuming with having zero knowledge of knitting.
With these basics I’m going to show you here, you’ll be able to knit a blanket, a scarf, anything simple. And I highly suggest doing that to start. I made so many blankets the first few months of knitting. Like so many! I actually said once that I had no desire to knit sweaters and was perfectly happy and content to stick with blankets and scarves 🙈. It wasn’t long until I knit my first sweater. Best decision I made! Anyway, let’s get to it.
Longtail Cast on Method
Starting with getting your yarn onto the needles. The longtail cast on method is my go to for cast on. I really use this over any other method because it’s easy to do and I love the look of it. But there’s definitely a time and place for the others!
Knit Stitch
The knit stitch is basically the base of knitting. It’s kind of like the cornerstone of all other stitches. It’s a part of everything. In my opinion, you can make anything if you can do the knit stitch. For example, since the garter stitch is working all rows of knit stitch, you can knit an entire sweater in garter stitch. That’s literally using one stitch!
Purl Stitch
The purl stitch is your second needed basic stitch. Between knit stitches and purl stitches, that’s where all other more complex stitches are created. Knits and purls make rib stitch, moss stitch, stockinette stitch, drop stitch, etc. Once you’ve mastered the knit and purl stitches, I promise you are going to be going places.
Basic bind off
Once you’ve finished all of your knitting, it’s time to get all the stitches off of your needles, hence the bind off. This is basically knitting your stitches off. You’ll knit the first stitch, knit the second stitch, then left the first one over the second. You’ll then simply repeat this all the way to the end of the row and all stitches are off. When you have just one stitch left, you’ll cut the yarn leaving a bit of some length, then pull it up through the loop and then just give it a little tug to tighten.
With these knitting basics, I would recommend practicing by knitting a scarf to start. That way you can get the hang of doing garter stitch over and over. Here’s a free garter scarf pattern you can use to start!
