Basic Steps in Knitting

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Jan, today I'm just going to cover briefly the four basic steps in knitting. The first thing you need to do is get the stitches on the needle, knit, purl, and get them off the needle. So we are going to cast on. This is the long tail cast on method. There is a variety of methods that you can use to get them on the need, but the first thing you need to do is get your stitches onto the needle. When you have the desired number of stitches you want you turn it around, don't knit with the tail you will run out of yarn. Then you start knitting. The first stitch we are going to do is the knit stitch. If you knit every row of the piece it will look the same on both sides, it will be bumpy on both sides, and that is called garter stitch. There is your first knit row. The next stitch is the purl stitch, and if you knit one row, and purl one row that creates a smooth side to your work, and a bumpy side to your work, and it is called stockinette stitch. And when you purl the needle goes from back to front, the yarn is in front of the work, you wrap the yarn down, and let it come up and off. Back to front, bring the needle down, yarn down, let it flow up and off. And you can see that just our little piece is smooth on one side, and it is bumpy on the other side. The last step in your knitting it is called binding off. Your piece is all done, it is as long as you want it to be, you need to get it off of the needles. To bind off the first thing you do is knit two stitches. Just whatever regular knitting method, then you take the left needle insert it into the first stitch, pull it up, and over the second one. You do that all the way across. We are going to knit the stitch, the needle goes into the first stitch, pulls it up and over, and off. Make sure it is nice and loose. Knit one more stitch, take the first one pull it up and over. Do that all the way across. There's our first bound off stitches and they are nice and loose. You don't want that to pull too tightly. I'm Jan with Just Jan Designs here at the yarn company in Palm Desert. We have just gone over the basic steps of knitting. Casting on, the knit stitch, the purl stitch, and binding off."