So you have decided to learn to knit. Is it some perplexing, time-consuming art? No. All you need is a pair of needles and a skein of yarn.
Choosing needles
Any size that feels comfortable in your hands, or whatever your pattern calls for. Needles come in aluminium, bamboo and plastic most commonly.
For a beginner, wood or bamboo are easier. They grip the yarn slightly where metal lets it slide, and that friction means fewer dropped stitches while you are still learning to control the work.
Choosing yarn
Any colour, weight or material. If you are not following a pattern, try a few – bamboo, wool, acrylic – and find what you like in your hands.
If you are following a pattern, use the yarn it specifies, or expect to adjust. A different yarn changes the gauge, and the gauge changes the finished size.
Start with a smooth, light-coloured, medium-weight yarn. Dark and fuzzy yarns make it genuinely hard to see your stitches, which is the last thing you need in the first week.
Gauge and tension
Patterns mention both. Gauge is the number of stitches per inch that pattern expects. Tension is how tightly you hold the yarn as you work, and it is what determines the gauge you actually get.
Stitch size changes with tension, so try a few until you find the one that matches your pattern. Your tension will also be uneven for the first while and will settle on its own – do not unpick a project over it.
Casting on
Casting on makes the first row of stitches. There are many methods; the loop cast on is among the simplest.
Start with a slip knot. Take about six inches of yarn and make a loop around your index finger, lay the loop over the tail, then pull the strand in the middle of the loop up through it to make a second loop. Put that on your left needle and pull the working end – the strand going to the ball – until it sits snug against the needle. The slip knot can count as your first stitch or be treated as temporary.
For the cast on itself, hold the needle with the slip knot in your left hand and the working yarn in your right. Loop the yarn around your right index finger and slide the needle through the front of the loop. Pull until it is firm enough not to slip off, but loose enough that you can get a needle through it later. Repeat until you have the number of stitches the pattern wants.
That last point is worth taking seriously. A cast-on edge worked too tightly will not stretch, and it is the single most common reason a first hat or sock will not go on.
The knit stitch
Hold the needles in your palms with both points up, the way you would hold cutlery. Keep the working yarn in your right hand, behind the work.
Push the right needle through the first stitch from front left to back right. Wrap the working yarn once around the point of the right needle, keeping the stitch on the left needle. Draw the right needle back through the stitch without dropping the wrap. Slide the old stitch off the left needle, and tug the working yarn gently until the tension matches the rest.
The purl stitch
Same needle position, but the working yarn is held in front of the work.
Push the right needle through the stitch from front right to front left. Wrap the yarn around the right needle point and draw it back through. Slide the stitch off the left needle and settle the tension.
Knit and purl are the same motion mirrored. Together they make almost everything – all of stocking stitch, garter stitch and ribbing is just these two in different orders.
At the end of each row, swap the needles between hands: the work goes to the left needle, the working yarn stays with the right.
Binding off
To finish, bind off the last row. Use knit stitches if the knit side faces you, purl stitches if the purl side does.
Work the first two stitches as normal. With the left needle, lift the first stitch on the right needle over the second and off. Work the next stitch and repeat, lifting and dropping, until one stitch remains.
Cut the yarn leaving six to eight inches to weave in, pull the end through the last stitch, and tug gently to fasten off.
Bind off loosely. A tight bind-off puckers the edge and, on anything that has to stretch over a head or a foot, will make the finished piece unwearable.
That is the whole of it
Cast on, knit, purl, bind off. Everything else in knitting is a variation on those four things. Start with something flat and forgiving – a dishcloth or a simple scarf – and the rest follows faster than you expect.
