Learn To Knit Video Tutorial

Hi, welcome to our Learn to Knit tutorial. This is a series of beginner tutorials. View these in sequence and you’ll be off to a good start. Here we go.

Often, the first step in knitting is winding your skein of yarn into a ball. Lots of yarn comes in the form of a skein or hank, which is essentially a big necklace of yarn. Winding it into a ball is critical in preventing a very tangled mess. If your yarn is already in a ball, you can skip this step. If not, let’s get started. First, unfold the skein so it is one big loop. Examine where the skein is secured to make sure that everything is tidy and no strands are astray. If you have a buddy who can hold the loop around their hands, that’s easiest. If not, try the back of a chair, your bent knees, or even your feet. Snip the yarn that is holding the skein together and finding an end, wrap the yarn around your hand a few dozen times. Slip the yarn off your hand, keeping it neatly contained. Now firmly holding the beginning of the ball. Wind the yarn perpendicular to the first wraps. Include your fingers and wind until your hand feels full. Slip your fingers out. Grab the bundle of yarn and wind around your fingers again perpendicular to the last wraps. Continue in this manner until you have a ball. 

Now that you have your yarn safely in a ball, it’s time to get some stitches on your needles. This is called casting on. There are lots of ways to cast on, but the most common method is the long tail cast on. Here we’ll show you a variation of that technique called the thumb method. It’s a great place for beginners to start. Also, a note to lefties that we’re all the same when it comes to knitting, so just follow along.

I’m going to show you how to do a long tail cast on using a thumb method. The first thing you want to do is measure about three and a half times the width of whatever you’re working on. At that point, you’re going to make a slip knot. Draw a circle in your hand with the yarn. Take that strand that’s on top of the circle to the back of the circle. Then use the tip of your needle to go under that strand and gently pull up. You can pull on the two strands coming off of the knot to snug it up to the needle. Make sure it’s not too tight though. This is going to be your first stitch.

So now you’re ready to set up for the thumb method. You have your long tail in front coming off the front of your needle and you’re working yarn attached to the ball coming off the back of the needle.

First, just hold that working yarn with the needle in your right hand. Now take your left hand and with all four of your fingers, grab that long tail coming off the front of the needle. With your thumb, swoop it under that long tail and put it out like this, like you’re hitch hiking, kind of. Let’s do it one more time. Hold the working yarn with your needle in your right hand. Grab the long tail with your four left fingers. Swoop your thumb under the strand, the long tail and out like you’re giving a thumbs up. Then you’re going to take the tip of your needle to the base of your thumb. Draw it up your thumb picking up that strand. Now you have the needle and your thumb in this loop. With your right hand, take the working yarn and wrap it counterclockwise around the needle. After you do that, take the tip of the needle through that loop coming off your thumb. Let the thumb fall out and then gently pull the long tail to tighten up that stitch.

Let’s make sure our setup is good again and take the tip of the needle to the thumb. Draw it up the thumb, picking up that strand. Wrap the working yarn around the needle. Bring the needle through the loop coming off of your thumb, and then gently tighten. Take the needle to the base of your thumb. Draw it up your thumb picking up that strand. Take your working yarn, wrap it counterclockwise around your needle. Draw the needle through that loop on your thumb. Let your thumb fall out and then gently tighten that stitch. So now we have four stitches. Let’s do a couple more. I promise as you do this, the more and more it’ll get faster and faster. So needle to the thumb. Up the thumb, wrap the needle. Needle through the loop, thumb comes out, gently tighten. That’s a long tail cast on using a thumb method.

Once you’ve cast on it’s time to knit. There are only two stitches in knitting the knit stitch and the purl stitch. Both are methods of pulling loops through loops to create a fabric, and both are worked in rows from right to left on your needle, let’s learn the knit stitch.

I’m going to show you how to do a knit stitch. First, I’m going to show you the basic actions involved. With my working yarn coming off the back of my right needle, I’m going to use the tip of my right needle and insert it into the front leg of the first stitch on the left needle and in away-from-me motion. I’m going to use my right hand and take my working yarn and wrap it counterclockwise around the tip of my right needle, creating a loop. I’m going to pull that loop and my right needle towards me through that first stitch on the left needle, turning that loop into a stitch. I’m going to let that original stitch I worked into fall off that left needle. And here we have our new stitch on our right needle.

Let’s do that again with my working yarn in back, insert my right needle into the front leg of the first stitch on my left needle. With my right hand wrap the working yarn counterclockwise around the tip of the right needle. Pull the tip of the right needle towards me through that first stitch on the left needle, creating our new stitch and letting that old stitch fall off the left needle. Here we have another new stitch on our right needle.

Now that I’ve shown you the basics of knit stitch, I’m going to show you how to knit the first stitch of new row of stitches. I’m going to move this needle holding all of my stitches into my left hand and move the empty needle into my right hand. The working yarn is coming from the right end of this left needle. Just as before you want your working yarn behind your work in order to make knit stitches, be sure to not take your working yarn over the top of the needle. Take it under the needle to the back of your work. With the tip of your right needle. Insert it into the front leg of the first stitch on my left needle. With your working yarn wrap counterclockwise around the tip of the right needle, pull the right needle towards you through that first stitch on the left needle, creating this new stitch and letting that old stitch fall off the left needle. Then you can carry on just as you learned earlier in the basic section of this video. If you knit every single row, you’ll create garter stitch. Garter stitch is a really wonderful fabric with these beautiful ridges and it’s extra, extra warm. It’s a great place to start learning how to knit.

You may have noticed that as you make knit stitches, they form V shapes. If you look at the back, you’ll see that each stitch looks like a little bump. This is in fact what a purl stitch looks like as you make it. So the wrong side of a knit stitch is a purl and ta-da. The wrong side of a purl stitch is a knit. Let’s make some purls. 

I’m going to show you how to do a purl stitch. The first thing you want to do when you’re purling is to make sure your working yarn is on the front side of your work or closest to you opposed to being on the far side of your work or away from you. So here we have it in the front of our work. Now what I’m going to do to purl is going to take this tip of my right needle and I’m going to insert it into the front leg of this first stitch on my left needle in a towards-me motion. So from back here towards me through this front leg of this first stitch. Then with my right hand, I’m going to take my working yarn and I’m going to loop it around the tip of that right needle in a counterclockwise motion.

Now I’m going to gently push the tip of this needle through that stitch on the left needle, bringing the loop with it, and I’ve now created a new stitch and I’ve let that stitch fall off the left needle. Let me show you again. Take the tip of your right needle towards you through that front leg on the first stitch of the left needle. With your right hand counterclockwise, wrap the tip of the right needle. Gently push the needle through that left stitch, creating the new stitch and letting the old stitch fall off that left needle. It’s as easy as that.

Now that you’ve had some experience with knitting and purling, you’ll need to know what to do when you finish a ball or want to start a new color. An important and surprising rule of knitting is that you never tie a knot. Here’s what you do instead. Stop knitting with the old ball when there are at least eight inches of yarn remaining. To begin the new ball, put the right needle into the next stitch. Fold the new yarn about eight inches from its end, and with the tail on the left, place the loop of new yarn over the right needle with the tail coming out the back of the work. Pull the loop through the first stitch on the left needle and allow the stitch to fall off the needle just like a regular knit stitch. This leaves two tails as well as loose stitches and a small hole in the knitting, but never fear you’ll weave in those ends later. We have a tutorial on how to do that at purlsoho.com. Here’s a tip. Try to add the new ball close to the edge of your work so the woven in ends will be as inconspicuous as possible. We’ve done it in the middle here to clearly show the process. 

Okay, all done with your project, you’ll have to remove all those stitches safely from the needles so they don’t unravel. This process is called binding off or sometimes casting off. They’re the same. Make sure to be nice and loose when you bind off. In order to avoid a taut edge Some people even bind off with a larger needle to ensure a relaxed edge. Here’s how to bind off in knit stitch. 

I’m going to show you how to do a basic bind off. To begin knit two stitches…That’s one, two. Now that you’ve knit two stitches, use the tip of your left needle and insert it into the front of the right-most stitch on your right needle. Gently pull it up and over. That left stitch on the right needle and off the right needle. You’ve bound off one stitch. Now, knit one once again, we have two stitches on the right needle, so I’m going to use the tip of my left needle to pick up that right-most stitch. Gently pull it up and over the left stitch and off the right needle. We’ve bound off two. Once again knit one. Here we are with two stitches on our right needle. Use the left needle to bind one off. There we go. Continue in this fashion until just one stitch remains on your right needle. Okay, now that I just have one stitch left on my right needle, I’m going to gently pull up. I’m going to remove the needle. I’m going to keep pulling my working yarn up a fair amount, and now I can cut my working yarn leaving about a six- to eight-inch tail. And here we have a fully bound off edge. You can see that this basic bind off creates kind of what looks like a sideways row of knit stitches. You have those Vs but they’re running this way. That’s it. That’s a basic bind off.

And those are the basics as you start on your first project. Don’t worry too much about perfection. Just try to get comfortable with the movements and have some fun. Knitting is a lifelong pursuit with many mysteries and surprises. We hope you love it as much as we do.