How to Do the Purl Stitch: Scarf Knitting

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Michelle and I'm here on behalf of Expert Village. We are going to learn how to knit a scarf for beginners and while we are doing that we also go over some basic tips that you need to know to get started in knitting. We have already discussed that there is only two real stitches that we would really use in knitting the knit and the pearl stitch. You know how to knit so now let's learn how to pearl. Basically a pearl stitch is a backwards knit stitch. Although sometimes it gets easier to think of it as a whole different stitch instead of trying to worry to try to do everything backwards. You think of it however it makes the most since to you. When we make a pearl stitch instead of going from front to back we are going to bring our yarn around to the front of our project and we are going to slide our needle from back to front. That is really the basic difference and when I show it to you, you would be able to see right away what I'm talking about. The very most important thing when we are doing a pearl stitch is then rather then holding the yarn behind our project we need to hold it in front. So we just wrap it around the needle so now there it is in the front. We take the needle in the right hand and then insert it from back to front. We are still going to wrap the yarn around going to left to right. Slide through under it, catch that new loop on the back and slide this one off. That is a pearl stitch. If you are ever concerned that maybe you are not doing it right a good way to check is by referring to your project. If you see a little V there you have done a knit stitch. If you see a little hump on the back you have correctly done a pearl stitch. All we need to do is go from front to back with the yarn held in front of our project. Wrap it around and slide it through and off the needle. Now you know every stitch that you would ever needle to use to make a incredibly wide variety of different patterns and different projects."