If you’ve decided to take up the hobby of knitting but you are a complete beginner and have no clue where to start, look no further! We’ve put together a little guide for you to give you some tips, tricks and to help you with your first steps towards making your very own garment. If you’ve recently bought one of the Stitch’s kits and you need to know the terms and techniques we use in our patterns then use this little guide to help you glide through your needles and wool like you’re gliding through the air.
How to cast on
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Make a little loop at the end of your wool, using a slip-knot
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Wrap the yarn around your left thumb and hold the needle in your right hand
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Insert the needle through the loop around your thumb, slide your thumb out, and pull gently on the yarn strand to tighten the stitch.
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Cast on however many stitches you need depending on the pattern you’re following
Top tip! Whilst your casting on think “over towards you, needle through, yarn around, pull through and off.”
How to do your classic knit stitch
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Take your right needle underneath your left one and through your last cast-on stitch (make sure both needles are touching!)
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Grab the yarn attached to the ball of yarn and wrap it around the right hand needle
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Push the loop of yarn through the stitch, pull it though and take off to make a new stitch on your opposite needle
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Pull yarn to tighten the stitch and continue until your row has finished!
How to do a purl stitch
You should now have a finished row on one needle, congrats!
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Turn your needle around, you should see little lumps on your stitches, they are your purl rows.
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Take your needle over the first stitch so the needle is going towards you instead of away from you
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Take the yarn from your ball in front of the needle and throw it over your right needle (the yarn should be in front of the right needle)
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Now wrap the yarn around the right needle from the back to the front
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Push the needle through and grab the loop you just made
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Drop the loop off the needle so the stitch is now on the opposite needle
Top tip! Think “in, front of the needle and off."
Knit 2 together explained
In some of the Stitch kits you may see the phrase ‘knit 2 together’
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The needle into the second to last loop you’re knitting (you should have 2 stitches in your needle not 1 like you would with a regular knit stitch)
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Take the yarn around the needle just like a normal knitting stitch
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Push the stitch through and slip off the 2 stitches onto the opposite needle
How to cast off
With our kits you’ll need to be able to know how to cast off. Once your very own piece of knitting is all finished and looking fab you’ll need to get it off the needles and make sure it’s nice and secure.Knit the first 2 stitches onto your opposite and empty needle
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Go into the front of your first stitch with your left needle and pull it over the second one taking it off the needle
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You’ll be left with one stitch on the right needle. Knit another stitch and repeat until the end of the row
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When there is only one stitch left, slip this off the needle and thread the yarn through the loop to secure it.
If all the abbreviations used in our patterns are overwhelming you a little or if you come across any tricky knitting abbreviations that you don’t yet understand use this knitting dictionary to help you with any terms!
Good luck and happy knitting!
