Knitting Patterns: Stitches

Video Transcript

"So once you've got your materials, and you've come home with your pattern, you're pattern is going to tell you what stitches they're using in the body of the pattern. So often times you're going to start off with a ribbing, which is at the bottom of a sweater, the bottom of a cuff, and that's what makes it have an elastic quality. So for this pattern it's telling you there's a knit 1, pearl 1 ribbing, that you're going to, on row 1, which is going to be the right side, but I didn't write it there, you're going to knit 1 stitch, then pearl 1 stitch. And you're going to repeat that combination, knit a stitch, pearl a stitch across the row. And then when you go to row 2, and all the following rows, so you're no longer thinking of it as row 1, row 2, you're going to knit your knit stitches, and pearl your pearl stitches. And that's something you'll learn to do later on, how to read your stitches. Then it's telling you that there's a ridge stitch involved in the pattern. For this, it is important to know your right side from your wrong side. Row 1 is going to be a right side row, it's going to be knit, so here we're using those abbreviations that we looked on earlier. The wrong side, row 2, is going to be a pearl, row 3 is going to be a knit, row 4, is going to be a knit as well. And you would repeat this 4 rows to make up your pattern. So for the body of whatever you're making, you're going to be constantly repeating these 4 rows. And this is what the ridge stitch will look like, right here. So you'll have that little bump across the stitch, right there. And then this is what a knit 1, pearl 1 rib will look like. It actually looks like you're only seeing the knit stitches, but you see, it draws it in. If you were to pull it out a little bit, you can see, here was a knit, here was a pearl, here was a knit, here is a pearl, and there's that elastic quality."