Learn To Knit | A Free Step-by-Step Tutorial

Hi! This is Whitney from Purl Soho, and this is our Learn To Knit Tutorial. We’ve been teaching people to knit for over 20 years, and along the way we’ve learned how to introduce basic knitting techniques in a way that gives people the confidence to embark on a life-long knitting journey.

Our Learn To Knit Kit is a great companion to this video. It’s okay if you don’t have it. You can definitely follow along with your own yarn and knitting needles, but if you do have the kit, you’ll have the support of this instructional booklet which covers the same material we’ll cover here, but with step-by-step photos and written instructions you can turn to whenever you need a refresher or to slow the information down. It also includes links to individual tutorials if there’s a step you want to find easily and hone in on.

The kit also includes two skeins of our Super Soft Merino, which is the ultimate yarn for a first-time knitter. Not only is it actually super spectacularly soft, but it is also a single ply of yarn, which means that your knitting needle will easily find its way under your stitches without splitting the yarn. It is also what knitters call a bulky weight, which means that it is on the thicker end of the yarn spectrum, making your work clearly visible and also relatively speedy. Since this is your first time knitting, you’ll be eager to see the results and this yarn will get you there quickly.

On top of all that, Super Soft Merino comes in dozens of gorgeous colors, So you can pick the one that actually inspires you. Maybe it’s something soft and relaxing like this beautiful Pale Verdigris color, or maybe you prefer a little kick like this Super Pink… Whatever color you gravitate toward! The point is that just because you’ve never knit before doesn’t mean you don’t have ideas about beauty. You certainly do, and your first foray into knitting should be as filled with beauty and inspiration as your hundredth.

Let’s also touch on the accessories you’ll find in your Learn To Knit Kit. It includes these two wooden knitting needles. Wood is a nice material for beginners, because it’s not as slippery as metal or plastic. And you can see that these needles are fairly thick. They’re US size 13, which means they’re perfectly suited for the yarn you’ll be using.

And one more little thing is this tapestry needle, also called a yarn needle. This is like a sewing needle, but with an eye big enough for yarn, even bulky yarn like Super Soft Merino. You don’t knit with this needle, but you do use it to tidy things up once you’ve finished your project. More on that later.

That’s it. Those are the only materials you’ll need, and with just these things, plus the knowledge you’re about to gain, you’re ready to go. If you have the learned knit kit, you’ll find at the end of the booklet instructions to make your very first hand-knit scarf with your two skeins of Super Soft Merino. You’ll get to choose between three different stitch patterns or designs, and in the end, you’re going to have a finished scarf that you feel incredibly proud of. To get there, we’re going to walk you through every step, from winding these skeins into balls to weaving in your ends.

But if you ever need more support, we’re here for you. Email customerservice@purlsoho.com and we’ll write you right back. We also have free one-on-one help, which is our individual Zoom calls with one of our knitting specialists who will get you over any hurdle with patience and understanding. We are very glad you have found your way to this tutorial. Knitting is a lifelong journey that we are so excited to share with you. Let’s get started.

Winding A Skein Into A Ball

We’re ready to get started. Often, the very first step to knitting is winding your yarn into a ball. Lots of yarn comes already wound into a ball, but for yarn that comes in a skein or a hank like this, it’s absolutely critical to wind it into a ball before you knit with it. Otherwise, it will end up in a very tangled mess. There are tools that quickly accomplish this, called a swift and a ball winder, but if, like many knitters, you don’t own these, I’m going to show you how to do it by hand. Some knitters even prefer to do it this way.

The main reason that yarn comes in a skein is so that you can get to know the yarn before you knit it. You can unfold the skein and feel its drape and softness, its weight, its texture, and this is actually the first thing you need to do when you wind your skein into a ball. You open up the skein like this so that it is this one big loop. And what you want to do now is find where this loop is secured. All yarn is going to be tied at some point in the skein, often at two points. In this case, we just have this one tie securing this skein.

Now you want to examine this tie and make sure that there are no strands crossing over the tie. You want it to be very tidy so that here you can see that the tie has no yarn crossing over it. I’m going to look on this side too. And I see here we have a problem. This strand is crossing over the tie, so I just need to bring it, let’s see, well, yeah, I need to bring it over like this and there’s another strand here that needs to come over like that, so that the tie is clear, and this will prevent some frustration later. If you don’t do that again you might end up with a tangle.

Now you need to figure out how you’re going to keep this loop in-tact and organized while you wind your ball. Ideally you have a buddy who can hold the skein like this with their hands and you wind from there. But often we’re alone when we need to do this, and so some other options are to drape the loop over the back of a chair or around your bent knees or around your feet. Some people do that. Some people even wear the loop like a necklace and wind the skein from there.

Next, you’re going to snip the tie that’s holding your skein together. Ideally, you do this once the skein is in its secure position, but here I am going to show you before it’s there. So what you do is you snip the knot that’s holding your skein right here is the knot. I take my scissors and I’m going to just cut that knot like this. Then you remove the scrap yarn that’s tied around your skein and you find one of the ends of yarn and you’re going to start winding your ball with that end. Again you should be doing this step when your skin is already around your friend’s hands or your knees or wherever you have it. But I’ll come back to you ready to show you how to start winding your ball.

So you have the end of your yarn now in your hand and your skein securely positioned somewhere. And the first thing you’re going to do is just start wrapping the yarn around your fingers. You can do three fingers or four fingers, and you do that a couple dozen times, nice and loosely, nice and easy, like that. And now you slide your hand from inside that loop of yarn and grasp it firmly here like this so that you can continue to wind now perpendicular to those initial wraps.

Again it’s around around your fingers, and I’m winding until my hand feels pretty full, nice and easy like this. Then again pull your hand out from those wraps and grab the yarn this way, so that you can wind perpendicular to those last wraps like this. Now, the reason that you are keeping your fingers in there is so that your ball stays nice and relaxed. If you wind your ball too tight, then the fibers will stretch over time in the ball. Your yarn won’t be as plump; it’ll be all stretched out. So this is a nice way to keep your yarn in its original form. So here we are again, going winding perpendicular, just like that, and you keep doing this until you have wound all your yarn. I will come back and show you what that looks like.

I’ve been winding and I’ve gotten to the point where my ball is a little bit too big to keep putting my fingers in there and wrapping around my fingers. So now I’m just freestyling, rotating the ball, keeping my yarn loose, trying to keep the shape of the ball, nice and spherical, sort of rotating it as I wrap, these last few yards, really nice and loosely like this. I’m getting to the end here and now I have the end here ready to cast on for my project. I have no fear of any knots or tangles and I made this ball all by hand.

Casting On

Okay we’ve wound this really nice ball of yarn, and we are ready to cast on. Casting on is the first step of every knitting project. It’s the process of putting the first row of stitches onto your needle. There are lots of ways to cast on, but I’m going to show you the thumb method for working a basic Long-Tail Cast On. It’s our favorite technique for beginners because it’s easy and it introduces you to the knit stitch right away. You’ll need one knitting needle and of course a ball of yarn to get started.

So the first thing you do for this kind of cast on is you measure out a length of yarn three or four times the width of what you plan to make. So for example for a six inch wide scarf you would measure out about 18 to 24 inches of yarn. I tend to just eyeball this step so I say well 6 inches, one, two, three and then a little more to be safe.

So you can measure exactly or you can do an estimate like I always do and so then at this point in the yarn, what you want to do is make a slip knot. To do that, you just make a loop with the yarn like that, and you take the yarn that’s on top of the loop and you bring it behind. So you have a loop with the yarn coming behind like that. You take your knitting needle and you slide it under that bit of yarn that’s behind the loop. And then you grab both ends of the yarn and you just gently slide the knot so it is grazing your knitting needle.

So I’m gonna tell you right now something really important about casting on and knitting in general, which is you wanna be really relaxed and easy with your stitches. You don’t want to get too tight, pull too hard. For casting on, if you get too tight, your first row of stitches is going to be really difficult to knit. And also the edge of your finished piece will feel really taught. So I’ll keep reminding you, but try to remember to just be easy with the yarn and the stitches.

Okay, we have our slip knot on the needle and now we’re going to begin to cast on stitches. So hold the needle in your right hand. You can grab the yarn that’s coming from your ball just to keep it out of the way. And we’re going to take this end of the yarn that’s coming from the needle we call the tail. So what you’re going to do is grab the tail with the fingers of your left hand, then pass your thumb under the strand that’s coming from the needle and kind of turn your hand over in this thumbs up position.

Let’s do that again. Grab the yarn with the fingers of your left hand, pass your thumb under the yarn, and you have a loop around your thumb. It’s coming from the needle, and pass it behind your needle in a counterclockwise direction and bring your needle toward you through the loop that’s on your thumb, so that you can see you’ve put a stitch here on your needle. Now pull the tail gently so that this stitch is just touching your needle. Okay, that’s our first official cast-on stitch. Let’s do it again.

We’re going to grab the yarn, pass our thumb under, going to flip it into this thumbs-up position, slide your needle up your thumb so that you grab the front of that loop. Bring the working yarn behind the back of the needle counterclockwise, then pull the needle through the loop so that you’ve added another stitch onto your needle. Give this yarn a little tug.

Let’s do it again. Up your thumb, bring the yarn around your needle, then pull it through the loop that’s on your thumb. Now I’m getting fancy and not even letting go of the tail. I’m just using my thumb to, when it gets back into position, it kind of pulls this stitch tight on the needle, so, well, not tight, but where we want it. Up the thumb, wrap the yarn, pull the needle through the loop on your thumb, and there we go. One more time, up your thumb, wrap the yarn counterclockwise around the tip of your needle, and pull the yarn through the loop that’s on your thumb.

So your pattern will tell you how many stitches you need to cast on. Let’s say it says seven. Then you can see here you want to count your slip knot as your first stitch. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. I have seven stitches. They are pretty loose. They slide up and down the needle. They’re tidy, but they’re not super tight on my needle. It’s going to be really easy to knit my first row. And that’s all there is to it. That is the thumb method for the basic Long Tail Cast On. And you’re ready to knit.

Making Knit Stitches

Okay, we’ve cast on our 16 stitches and we’re ready to knit our first stitch. There are basically only two stitches in knitting. There are knits and there are purls. Both of them are ways to bring loops through other loops to create fabric, and you work both of them from right to left on your needle. So this is going to be the knit stitch. I have here 16 cast on stitches. I’m ready to make the garter stitch scarf of our Learn To Knit Kit.

And the first thing you’re going to do is hold the needle with the stitches in your left hand. Grab an empty needle and hold it in your right hand and take the tip of that needle and pass it into the front of the first stitch on your left needle. Just put it right into that stitch so that the right needle comes out behind your left needle. Now grab the yarn that’s coming from your ball, the working yarn, and bring the yarn behind the needles and to the front between the two needles in this counterclockwise motion. Then bring your right needle toward you, carrying the yarn through the loop on your left needle, so that you can see here, there’s a stitch on the right needle, and now we can allow the stitch on the left needle to fall off the tip of the left needle like that. We’ve made one knit stitch.

Let’s do it again. Insert the tip of your right needle into the front leg of the next stitch. It comes out behind your left needle. Take the working yarn, bring it behind, and then between the two needles, bring that right needle toward you so that you are carrying the yarn through the stitch on the left needle. You have a new stitch on the right needle and you can allow the left stitch to just slide right off the tip like that. Insert the right tip into the first stitch.

Here’s a little thing to keep in mind is that you want to make sure that all of your knitting is happening on the thickest part of your needles, not here at the tip. If you work everything at the tip, your stitches are going to be really small and feel tight once they get onto the main part of your needle. So just make sure this is all happening here where your needle is actually the size of your needle, the thickest part of your needle.

Okay, take the yarn, wrap it behind and through, pull the stitch through onto your right needle, and then drop it off the left needle. Again, right needle into this stitch. I need a little slack here, working yarn behind the needle so that it comes between the two needles and bring the stitch through and off the left needle.

I’m going to show you what that looks like in a little bit faster time because you really do get into the rhythm of knitting And actually your fingers kind of help you along a bit more than it looks like in slow motion. You can see I’m using my left finger to kind of guide the right needle through the stitch. You sort these things out as you get comfortable with knitting, but in the beginning it can feel a little awkward. Like that, bring the stitch through, insert the right tip, wrap the yarn, and bring the stitch through. I’m gonna finish up this row, and I’ll show you what to do at the end.

Ok, we’re getting to the end of our row here. I just have two more stitches to make. You make the last stitch just like you’ve made all the others: insert the needle, wrap the yarn, pull it through. Ok. Now the needle with all of my stitches is in my right hand, and the other needle is in my left hand.

So, to start the next row, we’re just going to switch the needles, and put this needle in my left hand and this needle in my right hand. Every single time you start a new row of stitches, you want the needle with all the stitches in your left hand with the working yarn coming from the tip and the empty needle in your right hand. So keep that in mind.

What I wanted to show you about starting a new row is this first stitch here. If you look at it, it is loose and wonky, looks a little messy, but what you want to do with that first stitch is absolutely nothing. I don’t try to tighten it, don’t try to fix it. Just treat it like a normal stitch, and I promise it resolves itself. So keep that in mind.

Here we go, we insert the right needle into the stitch, take the working yarn, wrap it behind the back needle, between the two stitches, pull the stitch through, and bring it off the tip of your left needle. I’ll do a couple more stitches so that you can be assured that that first stitch really does work out. Ok, so you can see the edge here doesn’t look messy at all. It’s exactly how it should be. I didn’t do anything special to that first stitch. I just knit it like all the others. And so keep that in mind.

I also want to show you what we’re doing here. We are creating what we call a garter stitch pattern. Garter stitch is when you knit every single stitch of every single row. You get this beautiful corrugated fabric that lies perfectly flat and it’s also the same on the front side as it is on the back side. You cannot tell the difference and that’s really important if you’re making something where you can see both sides of the fabric, like a scarf when it wraps around you end up seeing both sides, and if you make your scarf in garter stitch it will look the same. It also has this really deep and plush and cozy feeling.

We totally love garter stitch and the great thing about it is it’s also the easiest stitch and now that you know how to make a knit stitch you can also knit garter. So cast on for your garter stitch scarf and get knitting!

Making Purl Stitches

Ok, so now you’ve gotten the hang of the knit stitch, which hopefully you’ve gotten the chance to practice it a little bit. And it’s time now to learn the other stitch in knitting, which is the purl stitch. So with those two stitches, you can do almost anything in knitting. So this is a pretty exciting step. You’ll see some things that are similar to knit stitches and some things that are a little bit different when you purl. So here we go.

Like knitting, you always hold the needle that has all your stitches in your left hand. And when you start the row, you have the empty needle in your right hand. Now, just a reminder that when you make a knit stitch, you insert the tip of your needle through this first stitch away from you and it ends up behind your left needle. So here for purling we’re going to do just about the opposite. We’re going to insert the tip of our right needle through the first stitch toward us and it’s going to end up in front of the left needle. So here we go.

Insert the tip of the right needle through the front of the first stitch toward you so that it ends up in front of the left needle. The yarn is coming from the front of your work when you purl. You take that yarn and you wrap it counter-clockwise around the front needle like that, and then you push this needle away from you so that that stitch goes through the stitch that’s on your left needle, and you allow it to come off your left needle. You have a new stitch on the right and you allow the old stitch off the left.

We’re going to do that again. You bring the needle through the front of that first stitch so that it ends up in front of the left needle, you wrap the yarn counterclockwise around your front needle, and you push that loop of yarn through the stitch that’s on your left needle and out the back. And then you have a new stitch on your right needle, and so you can allow this old stitch off the tip of your left needle. So toward you, wrap the yarn counterclockwise, push the new stitch out the back and allow the old stitch to fall off the left needle. Bring the needle toward you, wrap the yarn, push that new stitch out the back and allow that old stitch off.

Let’s speed it up a little bit so you can see how it looks once you get the hang of it, bringing the needle through, wrapping the yarn, pushing the new stitch out the back. You can see that I use my thumb to kind of push the needle, guide the needle down and away from me, like that. But you’ll come up with your own quirks as you start to get rolling. Most people think purling is a little bit more awkward than knitting and definitely also a little bit slower, so just keep practicing, keep at it and you will get the hang of purling. And once you do, there’s really nothing stopping you from doing almost anything in knitting.

I’ll show you here, what we have done is create a very basic stitch pattern which is called stockinette stitch. It is a really common stitch pattern in knitting. It is, you create you create it by purling one row, knitting one row, purling, knitting, purling knitting. So we just did a purl row here, and you can see that on this side of the fabric where we’ve only purled, you get these beautiful little what we call purl bumps, this nice nubbly texture. And then on the side of the work where we knit, you have this really smooth fabric that’s made up of little Vs. It is probably familiar looking to you. Many store-bought sweaters are knit in stockinette fabric. So you probably recognize the look of this stitch pattern.

Again, for this row, I would start by knitting all of the stitches, then turn the work and purl all the stitches. So that’s something that you can now do yourself, now that you have learned how to purl and a whole lot more too. So enjoy purling and that’s it. That’s how you do it.

Combining Knits + Purls

Now that you know how to purl, I’m going to show you how to switch between knit stitches and purl stitches. This is a critical skill for working stitch patterns. Stitch patterns are when you combine knits and purls into things like ribbing and lace and cables. There are thousands of stitch patterns in the world of knitting, and most of them require you to switch between knits and purls.

But before we begin, it will be helpful to know how to distinguish between the two stitches. So I have here a swatch of stockinette stitch where we knit one row and purl one row. And this is the knit side, this is the side where we knit every row, and you can see that each stitch here looks like a little V. That’s what a knit stitch looks like, a little V. And surprisingly, when you knit, you are automatically creating on the other side of the work a purl stitch.

So a purl stitch looks like a little bump. On this side of the work, we purled every row, so this whole side of little bumps is purl stitches. And just like with the knit stitch, when you purl a stitch, you’re automatically creating a knit stitch on the other side of the fabric.

So it’s great to keep in mind as we learn to switch between a knit and purl within one row, what a knit stitch looks like and what a purl stitch looks like. So a little V is a knit and a little bump is a purl. Let’s try combining the two.

I’m going to show you how to switch between knits and purls in a simple rib stitch. The rib stitch comes in lots of varieties, but all of them share this distinctive appearance of vertical striping. And that’s because when you work a rib stitch, you’re aligning your knit stitches and you’re aligning your purl stitches. Rib stitches are great because they’re the same on both sides, and they also lie really flat, which is nice for scarves and wraps and things like that. They also tend to pull together and be a bit elastic, so you’ll also see rib stitches used for hems and cuffs of sweaters and also hats that really hug your head.

So this is the most basic rib stitch. It’s a one-by-one rib, meaning it alternates between knit one stitch, purl one stitch. So when a row includes both knits and purls, you have to, this is really the crucial thing, so listen to this. You have to prepare the working yarn so it is properly positioned to make the next stitch. So for knit stitches, that means that the working yarn is coming from the back of your right needle, the back of your work.

So here we go. If you just pick your work up in the middle of a row and you forget what you’re doing. We just learned that you can figure it out by looking at what the next stitch looks like. Here you can see that the next stitch is a little V, so we know we have to knit it. So again, I have my working yarn coming from the back because my next stitch is a knit stitch. Here I go, I’m knitting. I’m going to knit that stitch just like usual.

And now the the next stitch you can see is a little bump here. So it’s a purl stitch, and to purl a stitch, you need your yarn to be coming from the front of the work. So what you do is you bring it between your needles like that, so it’s coming from the front of your right needle. And now we can properly purl this stitch.

And I’m alternating between knits and purls, so now I’m going to bring the working yarn to the back of the work so that I can knit the next stitch and to the front of the work so I can purl the next stitch. And so we’re going to get into a little rhythm here of moving the working yarn between the needles either to the back for a knit stitch or to the front here for a purl stitch. That’s all there is to it, getting in the habit of making sure that your working yarn is where it needs to be to work your next stitch, and you’ll be good to go, not only for switching between knits and purls, but for all sorts of stitch patterns. So give that some practice and you’re set for all sorts of possibilities.

Adding A Ball Of Yarn

Now that you’ve gotten the hang of knitting, you will eventually come to the end of your yarn. I’m going to show you how to add the next ball. An important and surprising rule of knitting is that you almost never tie a knot. So when you finish a ball of yarn, here’s what you do instead.

You stop knitting with the old ball when there are at least about 8 inches of yarn remaining. And to begin the new ball, you put your right needle into the next stitch, ready to knit the next stitch, you grab your new yarn and you fold it about eight inches from the end, like that, and then you loop the yarn over your right needle with the tail coming out the back of the needle like this. You can hold onto both strands to create a little bit of tension, and then you pull the stitch through, just like you would for a knit stitch, and you then just continue on knitting. Make sure you don’t knit with the tail, make sure you knit with the yarn that’s coming from the ball. And you just continue to knit. That’s actually all there is to it.

But there are two things that concern beginner knitters. One is that you will notice a gap between the two stitches where you changed the yarn. It creates a hole in your knitting, and so I want to reassure you that you will fix this problem at the end when you weave in these tails, you’ll cross these over, like that, and it will cover that gap. So don’t worry about that.

The other thing you may notice is that when you get to these stitches, they’re looser than your other stitches. So all you want to do when you get to that stitch where the tail is, is give it a little tug and hold it down maybe to give it some tension so that you can knit this stitch just like you would normally. You can do the same here, just give it a little tension so that you just knit it like normal. But even doing that, you may be able to see here that you have really loose stitches. But again, we’re going to fix that at the end just by giving them a little tug, tightening that tension, crossing them over, and weaving in the ends. So that’s all there is to adding a new ball of yarn. There’s nothing fancy, no knots, no special tricks.

Notice that I changed my ball here sort of near the edge of my knitting. That’s a good idea, especially when you’re knitting a scarf, because you will have an easier time weaving in your ends near the edge. I’m talking about if you’re knitting a piece that you want to look nice on both sides, if you change the ball closer to the edge, you’ll have an easier time disguising these ends. So that’s just a little tip there, but otherwise that’s all there is to it, that’s adding a new ball of yarn to your knitting.

Binding Off

You’ve gotten to the end of your scarf or whatever it is you’re making and so now it’s time to bind off. Binding off is the process of removing your stitches from the needle. Sometimes you’ll hear binding off referred to as casting off. They’re the same, and as with so much in knitting, there are many ways to do it.

This Basic Bind Off will work for most projects and is the easiest for beginners. You start by working the first two stitches of the row. I’m working in garter stitch, so this means I’m going to knit the first two stitches of the row so that I have two stitches on my right-hand needle. To bind off, you take the tip of your left needle and you insert it into the front leg of the first stitch on your right needle, just like that. Then you lift that stitch over the second stitch, over the tip of your right needle, and allow it to fall off the tip of your left needle, so that we have one stitch remaining on the right needle and we have bound off one stitch.

So to do that again we need to get another stitch on our right needle so we knit the next stitch. We have two on our right needle, insert your left needle into the front leg of that first stitch, lift it up and over the second stitch, off the tip of your right needle, and allow it to fall off the tip of your left needle as well. We’ll do that again, knit, insert the tip. When I lift the stitch to get it off the second stitch, it helps me to give a little tension on the working yarn so that it also doesn’t slide off the tip of the right needle, so I’m holding it back a little bit and then allowing this bound off stitch to come off the left needle.

So one of the most important things about binding off is to make sure you’re doing it really loosely. Some people use a bigger needle even, a bigger right needle, so that they’re making sure they’re working really loosely. I just keep it in mind and knit this stitch more loosely than I normally would. You can see that it really can slide around here on my right needle. And that helps ensure that your bind off edge isn’t hard and taut; it’ll be nice and flexible and fluid if you keep that in mind.

Ok, so you just keep binding off in this way until you get to the end of the row, making sure you have two stitches on your right needle, lifting the first stitch over the second stitch, and off the tip, and that’s all there is to it. I’ll show you what to do when you get to the end of the row. Meet me back here.

I’m getting to the end of my row here. I have one more stitch to bind off. I’m going to bind it off, and now I have one stitch remaining on my right needle. So to finish this up, what you do is you cut your yarn, leaving at least an 8-inch tail, so that you have something to weave in when you’re done. And you just pull your needle, so that you’ve created a loop here, a nice big loop, and you take this tail and you pass it through the center of that loop and you give it a tug like that. And that’s it. You’ve bound off your project.

Weaving In Ends

Now that you’ve taken your stitches off the needles, you’re ready to weave in the ends you created when you cast on, bound off, and changed balls. While there’s no right way to weave in your ends, one thing is true, and that is that you do not tie any knots. You also want to be sure to weave the ends into the back side of your project if there is one. Often with scarves, there isn’t, and so you do your best to make both sides look good.

I’m going to show you the easiest way to weave in your ends for garter stitch, one-by-one ribbing, and seed stitch, which are the three stitch patterns we use in our Learn to Knit Kit. And I’ll also show you stockinette stitch because it’s so common. Let’s start with garter.

Weaving In Ends: Garter Stitch

If you’re weaving in your ends where you added a new ball of yarn, you’re going to have two tails, and you’re also going to have a little bit of a hole in your knitting, which we’re going to fix as we weave in the ends. So the first thing to do is cross the two tails over each other like that. Then take your tapestry needle and thread one tail onto your needle.

So you can see here that garter stitch makes these ridges, these horizontal ridges, of staggered purl bumps. The concept here when we weave in ends is we’re going to sew up a purl bump and down the purl bump next to it, and just keep going along a ridge of purl bumps. So what you want to do is find the purl bump that’s right next to the hole here, right where you changed the ball of yarn, and pass your tapestry needle up that purl bump, like that. Then find the purl bump that’s right next to it and a little bit down and do the same thing, pass your tapestry needle down that purl bump. And you just keep doing that, going up a purl bump and down the one next to it.

How far you go depends a little bit on your yarn. If you’re using a really slippery and smooth yarn that might come undone easily, you’ll want to go for about two inches. In this case, the yarn is a bit stickier and feltier, so we only need to go for about an inch like that. And believe it or not, that will hold.

So now we’re going to do the same thing with the other tail, thread it onto the tapestry needle and find the purl bump that is right next to where the hole used to be, we’ve already fixed that problem, and pass your needle up that purl bump and then down the one next to it, and up, and down. And this is probably far enough, but we did change our ball pretty close to the edge, so if you want to be extra secure you could, at the end here, run your needle up the selvedge just to be extra secure.

So now you can see that that blends pretty well into the garter stitch ridges. It’s a little bit visible, but pretty good. And then on the other side, it’s absolutely not visible and there’s not even a hole where you changed the ball. To finish weaving in your ends here, you take your little scissors and you just snip the end right close to your knitting, like that. Might seem scary at first, but we promise, this will hold, this is what you do, no knots and a very nice finish for garter stitch.

Weaving In Ends: Ribbing

Okay, I have a swatch here of one-by-one ribbing and I’m going to show you how to weave in your ends in this situation. We have changed balls right here. We have two tails. I’ve thread one onto a tapestry needle. And again there’s a little bit of a hole here in the knitting, so I’m going to fix that as I weave in the tails. And the concept here is, we’re going to weave our needle along this purl column of stitches. This is a knit-one-purl-one rib, so there’s a column of all purl stitches here in between the knit columns.

So I have the tail here that’s right next to the hole, and I’m going to first pass the needle under the purl bump next to that little hole. That’s gonna fix that problem right off the bat. Then we’re going to take the needle and weave it along these purl bumps. So under this one, over the next one, under this one, over the next one, and under this last one here, like that. And just pull the yarn through.

And we’re going to do the same thing with the other tail in the other direction. So I just flipped my swatch around and I am threading the tail onto the tapestry needle and here is this column of purl stitches, passing my needle I’m gonna go right over this first one under, over, under, over, again for about one and a half, two inches just like that, and pull it through.

So now you can see that because this one-by-one ribbing is so elastic and the knit columns tend to retract and come together here, it’s really hiding this column of purl stitches where we wove in our ends. It’s quite invisible. And on the other side, it’s also very neat and tidy-looking. You can kind of see that the weaving is happening along this knit column, but it’s quite invisible, hard to see. That’s a really easy way to weave in ends for one-by-one ribbing, and I’m going to go ahead and do the same thing with my bind-off tail along this column, and then I’ll snip all the ends and be done.

Weaving In Ends: Seed Stitch

Here we have a swatch of seed stitch. I’m going to show you how to weave in the ends in this situation. It’s similar to garter stitch. The first thing we do is cross the tails to cover up the hole that we made when we added a new ball of yarn and thread this tail onto our tapestry needle.

And then just like garter stitch, I’m going to pass my needle under the purl bump right next to the hole. Here’s the hole, and here’s the purl bump right next to it. Then I’m gonna continue up this column of stitches and pass my needle under the next purl bump in the same column, and pull the yarn through, just like that. Now we’re going to do the same thing down the column right next to this one. So find the purl bump to the right of that one, bring your needle under it and under the next purl bump in that column, and pull your yarn through.

And then continue to zig-zag your way along your fabric. We go to the next column of purl stitches. You can see, there’s this whole column here. It might be hard to identify at first, but just look for these bumps and bring your needle under the next two here and then we’ll do one more like that, down two purl bumps. Pull the yarn through.

Let’s do the same thing with the other tail going the other way. Thread it onto your tapestry needle and pass your needle under the purl bump right next to where that hole was and then up the one right above it, then find the two bumps in the column next to that and pass your needle under those. And now we’ve reached the edge and we can just thread our needle along the edge, the stitches right along your selvedge here like that, and pull the yarn through.

So that’s a really good way for beginners to weave in ends with seed stitch. You can see that it looks fairly tidy here on what I would consider the wrong side, and then on the right side it’s absolutely invisible. We will do the same thing with the remaining ends from our cast on and bind off and then right close to our knitting just snip these ends, like that, and that is weaving in ends into seed stitch.

Weaving In Ends: Stockinette Stitch

Here I have a swatch of stockinette stitch. Stockinette stitch is all purl stitches on the back side or the wrong side and all knit stitches on the right side. So we’re going to weave our ends into the purl stitch side, the wrong side, and just like with all of the swatches we’ve done so far, you’re going to first cross your tails and thread one onto your tapestry needle.

There are a lot of ways to weave your ends into all of these stitch patterns, but most especially stockinette stitch. This is a really easy way for beginners to get the hang of it. It’s similar to garter stitch. You find your hole, pass your needle under the purl bump right next to the hole, and pull your yarn through.

Now we’re going to go up and down purl bumps along one row of stitches here. So try to find the row of purl bumps. You bring your needle under the purl bump right next to the one you just sewed under, it’s going to be slightly below that stitch, and pull the yarn through. Now pass your needle up the purl bump next to it, it’s going to be slightly above the last stitch, like that. And you just go down and up purl bumps, again for about an inch or two inches just like that, and do the same with the other tail going the other way.

So we find the first purl bump that it might help a little to think of these purl bumps actually as there are frowning ones and then smiling ones. So you want to pass this under the next frowning one like that. That helps beginners sometimes to visualize. So now we want to find one that’s in a U shape or a smiling one and pass the needle under there. So we go a few times like that, sort of even out the tension a little bit, give it a stretch.

And you can see that on the wrong side, that’s fairly well camouflaged. And then on the right side, it’s very nice finish. You don’t see the weaving in at all. And then to complete the process, you trim your ends very close to your knitting without cutting your knitting, of course. And you did it. You have woven in ends into stockinette stitch and actually learned along the way how to do it for garter, one-by-one rib, and seed stitch. So you’re well on your way to finishing all your knitting pieces. That’s it, that’s weaving in ends.

Closing Thoughts

You did it! Remember back to winding your first skein into a ball? Well, now you can do that, plus cast on, knit, purl, bind off, and in fact make an actual scarf. Our Learn to Knit Kit has instructions for three different scarves. The easiest and most basic is this garter stitch one. Many first-time knitters choose this pattern because it only requires the knit stitch. There’s no purling here, so you can focus on really getting the hang of just knitting. Garter stitch makes a really squishy fabric and a super cozy scarf.

But if you feel like jumping into something slightly more complex, both of these options alternate knit and purl stitches. This one-by-one rib scarf aligns knit stitches and purl stitches in columns that pull in a bit, like elastic. Think about the cuffs on many of your sweaters. One-by-one rib creates a thick and slightly denser fabric than garter stitch.

And then there’s this seed stitch scarf, which you also make by alternating knit and purl stitches. But instead of aligning them, you can see that the knits and purls are in a checkerboard pattern, which is perhaps the most elegant of the three options. All of these fabrics are the same on both sides. They lay nice and flat and are totally classic.

We could not be more excited for you to choose your favorite and get started. Keep in mind as you do that your first project is likely to be imperfect. It may have holes, there may be some wonkiness, but however your scarf turns out it is lovable because you made it. Be easy on yourself and remember that this is just your first of many projects. Enjoy each stitch and welcome to the world of knitting.