Day 4: Knit Stitch

Welcome back to our Learn to Knit series here at "The Knitting Circle." I'm Jen Lucas, and in this video, I'm gonna show you how to do the knit stitch. The knit stitch is the most basic stitch that you're gonna need in knitting and it's the first one that everybody learns and with it, you can make all sorts of projects. I'm gonna show you how to work the knit stitch using the English method, which is holding the yarn in your right hand, as well as the Continental method, which is holding the yarn in your left hand. So let's go ahead and start knitting and work on that knit stitch. So let's learn the knit stitch.

The knit stitch is the foundation of everything in knitting. Obviously, we knit with the knit stitch. So it's the first stitch you're gonna learn after casting on. And even just learning this one stitch, you can make all sorts of things. This fabric here, garter stitch, which we talked about in the last video is created by knitting the stitches every single row.

So we would work across and then we would turn our work to the other side and then just knit all the stitches again. You just would knit every single row. And creating this fabric, you could make sweaters, shawls, hats, just about anything you want knowing only how to do this one stitch. You're also gonna use that knit stitch on something like this, which is that stockinette stitch fabric. The most common fabric we think of when we think of knitting, and this fabric is created by working knit stitches on the right side and purl stitches on the wrong side, which we'll be learning the purl stitches in tomorrow's video.

So I'm gonna show you how to work the knit stitch. I just have a few stitches already cast on and a few rows worked. I'm just gonna do this on double pointed needles just so it's a little bit easier to handle and my needles aren't banging on the table. But you would use whatever needles you have, whether that's those single point needles, a circular needle. They're all gonna work the same.

So first I'm gonna demonstrate how to work the knit stitch in the English or throwing method, and as a reminder, that means that the yarn is gonna be in my right hand. So my working yard here, this is going to my ball of yarn. I'm gonna have that yarn in my right hand. So you're gonna tension the yarn however you like. You can bring your pinky under it and then bring it over.

Some people like to even wrap the yarn around the pinky, bring it over. Really just experiment with what feels comfortable for you. It takes many of us a little while to sort of figure out that rhythm of what feels comfortable when we're knitting. So just tension the yarn. We're gonna go over the pinky and then around and up.

And then we're gonna start creating that knit stitch. And you might remember from the cast on video that the knitted cast on actually creates basically a knit stitch, and then we're just casting it onto the left needle. So we're gonna be doing that exact same movement that you saw in that knitted cast on. And that is we're gonna insert the right needle from left to right into the stitch. So we're going into the stitch.

If I tilt it up here, you can see that it's in the stitch. So we're going into the stitch. We're wrapping it around. We're coming to the back around to the front. And now we need to pull the right needle through this loop while leaving this yarn still on the needle.

This is the trickiest part of knitting is making sure that your yarn doesn't fall off this needle. So we're just gonna pull it through. So we're going under that left needle to catch that yarn. So now we have a loop on the right needle so we can take the stitch on the left needle and just pop it off because we've created that new stitch. So that's a knit stitch.

Again, we're gonna go in to the next stitch on the left needle. We're gonna go from left to right through that stitch. We're gonna wrap the yarn around from the back around to the front, bring the right needle down and through the loop on the left needle, catching that yarn. So now we have a new stitch on the right needle. We're gonna take the stitch off the left needle and just take it completely off.

And so we've created this knit stitch. We're inserting, wrapping, pulling through, and off. And that's all there is to it. You might wanna again experiment with how you're holding the yarn. Figure out what feels most comfortable for you.

You'll notice that my knitting needle tapers to a point, and depending on the type of knitting needle you're using, this might be more dull or more sharp, but you wanna make sure that you're not scrunching your stitches up to the points and knitting right here off these points. If you do that, you're gonna be creating a much smaller stitch because the needle is much smaller down here. You wanna make sure that you're up on the fatter part of the needle as you're creating your stitches. And that'll help give you a nice even tension. You won't have knitting that's too tight.

So again, we're, we're throwing or English method, 'cause the yarn's in the right hand. Gonna insert, wrap around, bring the right needle down and through, take the stitch off the left needle and pop it off. And so that is knitting using the throwing or English method. So I'm just gonna work a few more stitches here till the end of this row. Just knitting all my stitches across, and then we'll flip it around and I will show you how to do the knit stitch using the Continental or picking method.

So now that we've finished that row, we would just flip it around, put the needle with the stitches back into our left hand, and now we're ready to work back. So now to do the knit stitch using the Continental method, I'm gonna have the yarn in my left hand. So once again, I'm gonna tension the yarn however feels comfortable to me without it being so tight that you feel like you're cutting off the circulation in your fingers, but you don't want it so loose that everything's floppy. You just need to find a nice sort of even tension. So I have the yarn going over my pinky and then we'll just wrap it around the finger like this.

So now to knit in the Continental method, we're gonna still insert our needle the exact same way. And our yarn's already right here by that right needle. We're just going to sort of scoop around like this, and then we're gonna bring the yarn down and through so that we've caught that loop on the right needle, and then same thing that we did before, we're gonna take the stitch off of the left needle and just take it off. Just like that. So again, this is the Continental method.

So the yarn is in my left hand. We're inserting the needle from left to right, wrapping the yarn around, pulling that loop through and off. And for some people it's more comfortable to have the yarn in your right hand. For some people, it's more comfortable to have the yarn in your left hand. And it really doesn't matter if you're left or right-handed.

I know actually a lot of people who are right-handed that knit in this way with the yarn in their left hand. And if you're left-handed, you might find this a little bit easier having that yarn in your left hand. But again, it's just about finding that tension. We're inserting the needle. You can see, I have that tension on the yarn.

I'm wrapping it around. Oops, wrapping it around, pulling that loop through and off. And so you would just keep working in that way until you got to the end of the row. And so I would encourage you to practice both ways and see what you like. Practice holding your yarn a little bit differently and work on a little swatch, maybe cast on 20 stitches or so, and just knit back and forth.

So again, when we're knitting in rows, we're just gonna flip it and then the needle with the stitches goes to our left hand and then we have the free needle in our right hand. And so that's true regardless of which hand you have your working yarn in. We're always having our stitches when they're completed in our left hand, free needle in the right, and we continue. So again, to do English or throwing, yarn's in my right hand. We're working this way.

Just like that. But then if we're gonna do the Continental, just flip hands here. We're just doing the same exact thing. You're just holding the yarn a little bit differently. So try both ways and see which way you like, and practice both ways.

It's actually a useful skill to be able to do it with both hands. As you advance your knitting skills and you wanna do something like stranded colorwork, Fair Isle, things like that, it's actually a very useful skill to be able to do the knit stitch with the yarn in your right hand and your left hand. So I hope that you'll give them both a try. There you go. Just take your time and practice.

It's one of those things like anything you just need to work at it a little bit every day. Find the method that works for you, whether that's the yarn in your right hand or your left hand, finding the right way to tension the yarn, just take a little time in practice and you'll have that knit stitch down in no time. Thanks so much for joining me. I look forward to seeing you back here soon to learn more knitting stitches.