How to Knit

Before you begin to knit, you must cast on

If you have completed our tutorial showing how to cast on, you will have several stitches on the left-hand (LH) needle, and your work will look something like this:

When you knit, you use the working yarn to make new loops, by working into the old loops made on the previous row.  The working yarn is at the right end of the cast on stitches, and this is where you will begin.  One by one, moving from right to left <<<, you will knit into each of the stitches on the left-hand needle.  Once you have knit a stitch, it is transferred from the left-hand needle to the right-hand needle.  Check out the video, or study the diagrams.

If you like free knitting patterns, and helpful tutorials like this one, sign up for our email updates… and tell us what you’d like to learn – Alexa and I are here to help!

How to knit

1. Insert the right-hand needle from front to back into the stitch. It needs to go in between the front and back ‘legs’ of a single stitch, not in between two stitches.
2. Wrap working yarn around right-hand needle point, at the back of the work.
3. Use right-hand needle tip to pull this loop of working yarn through the stitch from back to front, creating a new loop on the right-hand needle.
4. To complete the motion you must allow the old stitch (the one you just knit into) to slide off the end of the left-hand needle.

Continue to repeat steps 1-4 until all of the stitches on the left-hand needle are transferred to the right-hand needle.

Continue to repeat steps 1-4 until all of the stitches on the LH needle are transferred to the RH needle.

What do I do once I finish knitting all the stitches on the LH needle?  Simply pass the RH needle over into your left hand, rotating it 180 degrees, so that it becomes the LH needle.  Now you are ready to knit another row!

To knit the second row, you simply proceed the same as you did for the first.  Knit the stitches one at a time, working from right to left, repeating steps 1-4 above.

If you knit every row, the stitch pattern you create is called garter stitch.  It has horizontal lines of little bumps, and it looks the same on the front and the back of the fabric.  Garter stitch fabric is squishy, textural and stretchy, it lies nice and flat, and we love using garter stitch in our designs, but there are some other great stitch patterns which create different kinds of fabric, and to make these, we need to learn to purl.

Practice your newly learned cast on and knit skills by starting the Wheat Scarf or the Malt Blanket – the first two free designs in The Simple Collection!  Pick a yarn that you love and get started with a simple knit right now.

Free Learn to Knit Patterns by Tin Can Knits

Barley

Flax (free)

Rye

Wheat

Maize

Harvest

New tutorials, right to your inbox!

We’ll write you a note a couple times a month to share our new knitting tutorials, patterns and stories!

First Name

Email

Subscribe

Thanks for joining the list!

Check your email for to confirm your sign-up, then send us a note to say hello!