Beginner’s guide to knitting

How to get started with knitting – made simple

If you find yourself wanting to learn to knit and have no idea where to start, this Beginner’s guide to knitting a post for you. I’ll walk you through the supplies you’ll need to get started (without spending a fortune on them), tell you where you can buy them, basics of knitting, types of knitting, basic stitches and beginner patterns to get you started.

When people see pictures of my hand knitted projects on social media, or see me knitting making gifts and orders for family and friends, they are curious about them and have many questions about how to learn knitting or where to get started. All those questions have made me realize the need for this post. I feel a blog post like this can be very useful for beginners who want to find all the information in one place and can come back to this page at any point in time for reference.
 

By the end of this guide, you’ll know what supplies your’ll need and where to get them and how to get started with your first project. You can take a look at some of these beginner friendly projects to choose one of them to be your first. You can find many beginner friendly free knitting patterns HERE.
You can also find some useful tutorials related to knitting techniques HERE.

Basic Supplies:

  • Knitting needles
  • Yarn

Knitting needles and yarn are the 2 basic thing you’ll need in order to start knitting. Let’s first tackle the needles as they can either make your learning journey fun and exciting or frustrating. There are many options when it comes to needles and that can leave you confused while you decide what’s the best for you, and as a beginner how do you know what is the best kind of knitting needle for you? Here’s the answer to that.

Wooden Knitting needles

I would recommend wooden knitting needles for a beginner as the stitches stick to them and the needles don’t feel off. Balancing two needles and yarn is one of the biggest challenges for anyone who is learning to knit. Metal needles are great if one needs speed while knitting, but that’s not what you are looking for when you learning to knit. So stay away from metal needles until you are more comfortable. I still use wood double pointed needles when knitting in the round.
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Where can I buy needles?

If you are still not sure, if you are in this for the long haul , and just trying it out, don’t go for any knitting needles sets. They can cost you an arm and leg. I would recommend buying 1 or 2 pairs of wooden straight needles 4mm or 5mm thickness or both from the following stores.

  • Daiso – They have limited selection of wooden needles, but they are perfect for beginners. Only downside, you may not find many store locations in your city.
  • Michaels (Both Canada and USA)- Clovers wooden knitting needles are available here.
  • Walmart (Both Canada and USA.)- A very good selection of wooden knitting needles are available here.
  • Joann (Only in USA.)- Craft store which has a very good collection all knitting supplies.
  • Thrift stores – I’d once gone to Value village to donate some old clothes and I found a pair of brand new Susan Bates knitting needles. You never know what you’ll find there.
  • Amazon – You can find a variety of wooden knitting needles there.
  • Pony craft stores (India only) – They have a great online store. All my knitting are from this store They have a everything a knitter would need and they usually deliver a day or 2. They also have a retail store in Bangalore. Not sure if they have wooden needles.
  • Pradhan embroidery stores (India only) – this is another craft store located in Mumbai, India. They have also launched an online store last year. And have a great selection of needles and accessories too. They also sell yarn.


Now that we’ve covered knitting needles, let talk about accessories. Accessories make your life easier as a knitter.

Must have:

  •  Stitch markers – (Want to make your own ? Learn more) These are very useful in keep track of the stitch changes in a pattern. If knitting in the round, they help with tracking the beginning of the round. Safety pin kind of stitch markers are also useful in securing dropped stitches before fixing them.
  •  Tapestry needles- I have Chibi Tapestry needles which are great for knitting and crochet. I’d recommend a bent tip tapestry needle.
  •  Scissors – To cut the yarn after finishing a project.
  •  Measuring tape – To measure the project/useful for gauge testing as well.
  •  Crochet hook – Yes you read it right. It’s useful to have a couple of 3-4mm crochet hooks. This is very useful in fixing dropped stitches.
  •  Row counters – Must have until you learn to count rows by yourself, after that it’s a nice to have accessory.
  •  A small container/bag to keep all these bits and bobs.

Nice to have

  • Row counters
  • Stitch holders – if you are using the same needles for 2 projects, then you can hold the stitches of the non working project temporarily on the stich holders
  • Blocking needles
  • Point protectors
  • Pom Pom maker – useful when making hats.

Where can I buy accessories?

All the stores I mentioned above should have most of these accessories.
 

Yarn

There are many kinds of yarn. Broadly they can be classified into natural and artificial fibres.
Yarn weight tells us the thickness of the yarn.
Lace/Fingering weight, dk weight, medium / worsted , chunky/bulky, super chunky/bulky .
For a beginner dk or worsted weight yarn would be ideal. I’d recommend choosing bright /light colours instead of dark brown or black as they make it difficult to see the stitches.
Red heart super saver, Bernat Super Value, Bernat premium, Red heart comfort, Craft Smart value from Michael’s are great for beginner projects and in terms of price.
 

Basic stitches:

Knitting consists of 2 basic stitches :

  • Knit
  • Purl

 

We always start knitting by doing something called as a cast-on. This is the prep(first row) we do to start knitting.

 
Here are a few youtube videos to give you an idea of how these stitches are made

Types of knitting

  • English style
  • Continental style

Beginner projects

I’d recommend starting with dishcloth, pot holders, headband, cup cozies, beanies and fingerless mittens (knitted flat). Use garter/stockinette stitch.

While knitting, it’s very common to make mistakes. The most common ones we make as beginners (in simple patterns) are:

  • Knit instead of purl and vice versa.
  • Accidentally drop stitches from the needle. In knitting, every stitch sits on top of a stitch that’s underneath. So, if you drop a stitch, it’s imperative to fix it as soon as you realise it, to prevent the entire vertical line from unraveling. In the beginning, this feels like a nightmare and can be discouraging, but trust me it gets better once you get a hang of it. Here’s a link for you to refer to when you have to fix dropped stitches.
    https://youtu.be/eliQ0MXID0M

 

I hope you found the beginner’s guide to knitting useful. If you have any questions, please post them in the comments section of the post and I will reply as soon as I can.

Ranjitha

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