Knitting for Beginners: How to Knit

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You’re here because you want to learn how to knit, YAY!

Learning how to knit is way easier than you think. I’m going to bring it back to the basics.

We’ll discuss the knit stitch and then learn a super easy stitch called garter stitch.

Before we get started, make sure that you have stitches cast onto your knitting needles. Check out my blog post on how to cast on to get those stitches on your needles.

What is the Knit Stitch?

The knit stitch is the most basic, number one stitch.

When you knit a stitch, it creates a V stitch like the image below. By knitting & purling, you can create a whole variety of different stitches.

Knitting for beginners

If you followed along on my how to cast on blog post where we learned how to cast on via the knitting-on method, you’ll notice a huge similarity between these 2. They are almost the same, just one small difference.

1. In our left hand, we have a knitting needle that is holding our stitches. The right needle should be empty. Insert the right needle into the stitch on the left needle from behind.
2. Taking the working yarn, we are going to wrap the yarn around the right needle from back to front. 
3. Wrap the working yarn around the right needle and pull the yarn down so it touches the stitch on the left needle.
4. Now with the right needle, grab the yarn that we wrapped around the needle in the previous step. Pull down with the working yarn wrapped around the needle.
5. Pull the working yarn through the stitch on the left needle. It should almost look like there is an 8 on your needles. 
6. Instead of slipping the stitch onto the needle as you would do for the knitted cast on, we are going to push the stitch on our left needle off the hook (slip the stitch off).
7. And now we have knitted our first stitch onto the new working needle.

Time to knit garter stitch!

By far the most basic and easy knitting stitch is the garter stitch. Once you get lots of practice in with the garter stitch, learning more stitches will be even easier.

So why is garter stitch so easy? Because all you’re doing is knitting the stitches.

Garter Stitch

Row 1: Knit
Row 2: Knit

Knitting up with the garter stitch is the easiest and simplest way to learn how to knit. It also tends to go fast as all you are doing is knitting and aren’t adding in any other knitting techniques like purling.

I tend to enjoy using garter stitch when I knit up our dishcloths as its a very quick and easy knit-up that I can knit up in less than a day.

Happy knitting!