How to Cast On Knitting Stitches

Series Summary

Within the past few years, knitting has become quite popular again. A new generation of knitters use fun and creative yarns to make clothes, scarves and accessories. Knitting can be used as an alternative to traditional clothing manufacturers and is the perfect outlet for your personal style. All you need is a set of needles and some yarn to enter this exciting new world of do it yourself fashion.

In this free video series our expert will demonstrate knitting basics. You will get tips and advice on how to cast on the yarn to your knitting needles in several ways, and learn how to hold your knitting needles. You will also learn how to do basic knitting stitches, including a purl stitch and a stockinette stitch. If you have ever wanted to start knitting, let our expert show you how to get started on creating your own fun and easy crafts and clothes.

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Christine Pichini with Expert Village and today I'm going to teach you how to cast on in knitting. First you need to make a slip knot. Take your yarn fold one side over the other and then pull and loop through and you have a slip knot. Take the slip knot and slide it on to one of your needles and pull it taut. Now you are only going to need one needle for this method of cast on. You are going to hold it in your right hand and there will be two ends of yarn. This is the waist yarn and this is your working yarn the side that goes all the way to the ball of yarn. This is what you are going to work with. Hold it in your left hand like this, take your thumb and just slide it under the yarn like that so you have another cross, then dip the needle under that yarn and then pull through. You have just made a stitch. Take your thumb under with the needle and pull. Take the yarn, go under slide the needle under and pull. So here we have four stitches. You just repeat that for as many stitches as the pattern calls for. Obviously, you will have to periodically pull out more yarn from your ball and repeat. "