Knitting Step 2: How to Knit!

Posted by: Chocololic Knits on: June 12, 2010

In: Knitting Tutorials
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Okay, so you’ve already done Step 1: Casting On and have a bunch of stitches on the needle like this- Now what?

2.1 Have cast on ready to go!

Well knitting is basically the same as casting on except you don’t “save” the stitches on the first needle, you kick them off the end and they form a second row.

2.2 Put 2nd knitting needle under the first stitch. (To purl instead of knit you would put the needle the other way into the stitch. that will be lesson 3 though.) Remember keep the yarn on the right side.

2.3 Just like when casting on, wrap the yarn around the 2nd needle from the back to the front like this:

2.4 Also like casting on, slide the 2nd needle down and pull the wrapped yarn through the loop on the left needle.

2.5 Now the new knitting part: you have to slide the loop/stitch that’s on the left needle, off. It might be a little bulky and look weird at first but don’t worry after you get through a row or few it will shape up ^_^.

Tadah! Here is the completed first row. Again, it might not look like much, but you can see the beginning of the pretty “V”s that make up the front, knitted side. When you get to the end of the “right side” row you turn the work around to knit (or purl) the “wrong” side. The back will have horizontal bars, this is what “Purl” stitches look like. If you knit both the right and wrong sides, this is called the Garter stitch and has alternating rows of V’s and horizontal bars. It’s not as pretty as the all V’s (in the second picture)- you get this by knitting one side and purling on the other. The next lesson will show you how to purl…^_^