First, a quick recap: This Toolshed series is intended to serve as a basic introduction to knitting. As I said before, there are plenty of great resources, links, and videos showing you how to do individual stitches or steps. What I never found though, was a complete step by step, start to finish list of THINGS I NEED TO KNOW. It’s tough to look for a link showing how to Cast-on when you don’t even know what casting on means. My goal is to share the (great!) resources I found and point out the mistakes I made.
In Toolshed Part 1, we did a quick & dirty review of important terms, yarn types & sizes and how to select your needle type & size. Toolshed Part 2 hopefully gets you actually knitting!
I hope it goes without saying, but just in case – I’m not making videos of the entire process because I honestly don’t think we need yet another video showing the same thing. If you’ve stumbled here and have questions though, I’m always available to answer them. I taught myself to knit and I’m positive you can teach yourself. If you need help along the way, just ask!
Onto the things that involve knitting…
I learned to knit by buying some yarn and needles, sitting down with them, iPad in my lap, and pretty much just assuming that it was easy and I could already do it. The basics are easy. Knitting something really really well takes plenty of effort and practice. Just knitting though… so simple. KnittingHelp.com is where I learned the basics and has the absolute best, clearest, all around awesome videos.
These are literally the bullet points I followed. Watch with your yarn and needles in hand, pausing & rewinding often.
- Take the label off your yarn and roll into a ball.
- Decide if you’re going to knit Continental or English. Scroll down to the “Wait, Continental or English” section of this page. I picked continental because it’s what she uses in the first video and I didn’t see a reason to confuse myself further. Apparently, most knitters are English. Oops. Everything I show in pictures will be done Continental.
- Watch Long Tail Cast-on (there are other methods to cast on, but this is how I always start)
- Watch The Knit Stitch
- Watch Orientation for Beginning Knitting, which is a demo of a small project and shows you how to put everything together.
casting on
Watch & rewatch those, following along with your yarn, pulling out the first lousy attempts. You will have some lousy attempts. I had many. Later maybe we’ll talk about my trapezoidal scarf that I thought I was doing perfectly. I even bragged on Facebook about it, before realizing that I had so little understanding of what I was doing, I didn’t even know it was wrong, which, incidentally, is sort of like my time in any Physics class.
Once you have a perfect Cast on, knit knit knit knit knit. All knit stitches on straight needles is called garter stitch. Count your stitches for the first few rows, because you’ll probably mess up.
THIS IS WHERE I SHARE THE THING THAT I MESSED UP ON A MILLION TIMES AND DIDN’T EVEN REALIZE
When you flip your scarf to start your next row, you may see what looks like 2 stitches (above). This is still one stitch, your yarn is just in the wrong starting position.
If you knit both of these (don’t knit as shown above!), you’ll end up with an extra stitch in your row. Do this enough times, and you’ll be increasing your stitches each row until you have a very confusing, very ugly trapezoid (a ha! there was my mistake)
Instead, move the yarn behind, so you’re only knitting one stitch, then continue. Always watch for this on the start of a row.
continue knitting as usual
Knit knit knit knit until you’re almost done with the first skein, then join a second by just lining up the tails. See here, the section called Joining Yarn for a picture. Knit knit knit the second skein of yarn until the scarf is at a length you like, then watch Binding off.
A needle with large eye is invaluable for weaving in tails. I found mine in the knitting section, not with the sewing stuff. Re-watch the demo of a small project to see how to weave in your ends.
You now have a scarf. And it’s amazing, I’m sure. Seriously, even if it kind of really sucks in reality, you just crafted something from nothing. THAT IS AMAZING. I was straight up beaming proud of myself and you should be too. When the Zombie apocalypse comes, you will be equipped to clothe people during winter months. This is legit Laura Ingalls Wilder type stuff and even if your Mister insists that it’s not a necessary life skill and sort of rolls his eyes, know that you’re awesome and now have at least one solid survival skill that he doesn’t, so when he’s out cardio-ing you away from the Zombies, he’ll still have to save your ass so he doesn’t freeze during the long winter months.
Next time, button holes, ribbing, and cowls, oh my!
If you have a cat, he will get in the way. Fact.
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