Knitting
Knitting for beginners
Everything you need to cast on, knit your first rows, and bind off.
Needles and yarn
Start with a pair of US 8 (5 mm) straight needles in bamboo or wood — they grip the yarn better than metal while you learn. Pair them with a medium-weight wool or acrylic in a light, solid color. Avoid dark yarn and anything fuzzy until you can read your stitches easily.
Casting on
The long-tail cast-on gives a neat, stretchy edge. Make a slip knot, leaving a tail about three times the width of your finished piece. Hold the tail over your thumb and the working yarn over your index finger. Scoop the needle under the thumb loop, catch the finger yarn, and pull through. Repeat until you have the required number of stitches.
The knit stitch
Hold the needle with the cast-on stitches in your left hand. Insert the right needle through the front of the first stitch from left to right. Wrap the working yarn around the right needle, pull it through the stitch, and slide the old stitch off the left needle. Every stitch in every row knit this way produces garter stitch — a bumpy, reversible fabric.
The purl stitch
A purl is the reverse of a knit. Insert the right needle through the front of the stitch from right to left, wrap the yarn around the front of the needle, and pull through. Alternating one row of knit and one row of purl creates stockinette — the smooth, V-patterned fabric you see on most store-bought sweaters.
Binding off
Knit two stitches. Use the left needle to lift the first stitch over the second and off the right needle. Knit one more stitch and repeat the lift-over. Continue until one stitch remains, then cut the yarn, pull the tail through the last loop, and tighten. Your edge should be firm but not so tight that it puckers.
Reading a knitting chart
Knitting charts are read from the bottom up. Right-side rows read right to left and wrong-side rows read left to right. A blank or dot square usually means knit on the right side and purl on the wrong side. Always check the chart legend — symbols are not universal across publishers.