How to Knit: Easy for Beginners

hey guys it's Ryan in this video I'm gonna be teaching you how to knit I'm gonna go over all of the basics and keep it pretty simple because contrary to popular belief knitting is actually pretty easy it can seem intimidating at first but we're gonna keep it simple so you can hit the ground running all you're gonna need is yarn and two knitting needles and then you're ready to go so getting started first thing we need to do is we actually need to get the yarn onto the needles in the first place so you want to take the tail end of the yarn the tail end of the yarn is the end of the yarn and the rest of the yarn is gonna be connected to this ball you can just kind of let that be and just pull out enough yarn to be comfortable to work with I always end up with like a pile of loose yarn here and it sometimes becomes a tangled mess and that's totally fine so take the tail end of your yarn and we can put our needles aside for now what we're gonna do is we need to make a slip knot on the end of this yarn so to make a slipknot you want to take the yarn like this and with the tail end flip it over the part that's connected to the rest of the yarn just like this so you make a little loop here we're gonna take two fingers and put it through this loop like this and what we're going to do is grab the yarn that's connected to the rest of the yarn so this end of the yarn we're gonna grab it with the two fingers and pull it through this loop that we created so if you come up you grab that part of the yarn and then just gently pull everything a little tight but not too tight just so it's snug so you should end up with this nice little noose here that you can make tighter and loose you're depending on which end of the yarn you're pulling on so with this loop this is actually gonna be your first stitch that you put on your needles so take your needle put it through the loop that you just made and if you pull the end of the yarn that's connected to the rest of the yarn everything should gently tighten so the loop is gonna tighten up on the needle and you want to just give everything a little bit of a tug so it's nice and snug not too tight because you're gonna be working with this we want it to remain a little loose it's okay if it moves around a little bit but just make sure that it's closed up on the needle so this first loop is actually going to be the first stitch on our project and the number of stitches that we put on this first needle is going to determine the width of whatever it is you're knitting so if it's a scarf and you have maybe about 20 or so stitches then you're looking at a scarf that's gonna be about this wide and it'll kind of just grow out from there and these needles that I'm using here are pretty short just because they're easy to maneuver for me for the video but most in any new knitting needles are gonna give you a lot of space to create a pretty large project to cast on more stitches you don't need to make another Slipknot it's actually much easier than that all you have to do is make more loops and we're gonna put those loops onto this needle important note that I should have mentioned at the beginning also is that I am right-handed so all of my instructions are gonna kind of cater towards right-handed people if you're a left-handed hopefully you can make it work so it's comfortable for you or maybe I don't know watch the video in a mirror or something but hopefully it's easy to follow along as well so to get more stitches onto the needle what we're going to do is just gently wrap the yarn around your index finger like this you're holding the yarn in your left hand wrap the yarn like this and it naturally is going to create a little loop around your index finger like this and what we're gonna do with this loop because we're gonna slip it on to this needle or we're gonna use the needle and scoop the loop off of our finger so you have the yarn you kind of turn it a little bit so it creates a loop and then just take the needle and scoop the loop up through the bottom and pull it off like this and then just kind of gently pull it tight it's not too tight you just want it to be snug on the needle so to do that again you just wrap the yarn around your left index finger take the needle come up through the bottom and scoop the loop off onto the needle just like that you keep going doing a couple more so each one of these is going to make your project wider and wider as you go about this you'll notice that you're forming a kind of Ridge here where all the loops are kind of lined up so right here there's a nice little uniform edge of where all the loops are kind of looping over each other you have this nice little Ridge feel free to space everything out to give yourself more room and it's okay if you grab it but just make sure that that Ridge doesn't get twisted a lot of times if you're gripping the needle or something that Ridge is going to get twisted around so just make sure that you keep that Ridge as straight and uniform as possible so you don't get anything mixed up or twisted so I've casted on 18 stitches onto this needle and that's about as much as I can comfortably fit onto this needle and I'm gonna kind of space them all out a little bit just so they can have a nice little room to breathe between the stitches once you have the number of stitches cast it on that you want what we're going to do is we're going to turn the needle around just like this so we're on the back side of it so we've got the front here turn it around here so it's a yarn the tail end of the yarn is on the back or the left side of the needle and the rest of the yarn here is right at the front of the needle with your needle in this position you can hold on to it with your left hand it's okay if you touch the stitches that you just cast it on just make sure you're not gripping it too tightly so if anything gets twisted or messed up or anything like that just lightly hold it and now we're going to start knitting so this is the most complicated part but this is the bread and butter of knitting I mean this is the actual knitting that we're gonna do so take your second needle that we have and right away we're gonna get into this first loop or this first stitch and we're gonna start knitting this entire row of stitches so to knit this is how you do it so you want to take your first stitch here in the row we've got this is the yarn that's connected to the rest of it make sure you're not using the tail end of the yarn because that's not going to give you anything to work with on the front of your needle you've got the rest of the yarn and you've got this first stitch here slide the stitch up to the end of the needle it doesn't need to be too close but don't worry about it falling off or flying away or anything like that it's okay and what we're going to do is this we're going to take you the second needle and take it through this loop up through the backside of the left handed needle so take your needle and put it to the left side of this first stitch and scoop it through the loop along the backside of the left needle just like this so you're creating kind of an X with the two needles so I'll do that again just real quick so you can see you've got the loop here take the needle take it along the left side of the loop stick it up through the loop and come up along the backside of the two needles and then once you have that X you're going to take the yarn here this is the yarn that's connected to everything else the rest of the ball of yarn and we're going to loop it around the back right needle just like this so slip it around the back right needle that's along the back side and pull it not too tight but give it a nice little tug and it's going to be pulled between these two needles so between the X its gonna come up through the middle of them come down here like through the bottom and then you're gonna take the right needle the one that's in the right hand we're gonna come down and scoop off this remaining loop so come down through the loop come up along the left side like this and pull it off the left needle completely and if you pull everything a little tight it should look alright so that is knitting it's kind of crazy it can be really weird and intimidating and this does not especially since this is just our first row it does not look like we did anything but I promise you it's gonna get much clearer and easier as we go along so moving right along we're gonna do the second stitch now so we've got the second stitch up to the edge of this up to the end of this second needle on the Left take the right handed needle come up through the loop along the backside so you form a kind of X here and then take your yarn wrap it around the right needle in the back and go through the two needles so it's falling between the X and then take your right needle go down through that loop and we're just gonna scoop it off so we've got the right needle here you're just gonna go through the loop again and scoop it off like this so one more time on the third stitch here you go through the loop along the backside like this take your yarn and it's sometimes it's easy if you pinch I've got my thumb and my middle finger holding the right needle as well so part of this is so I can easily show you but I mean you can hold your needles however is comfortable for you eventually you'll kind of find a way that's works best for you but take the needle in the right hand wrap it around the back needle there go through the two needles and then with the right needle scoop off this remaining loop just like this okay so this is knitting you want to do this to every single stitch on your row you're going through that first loop you're wrapping the yarn around and then you're going down and looping pulling off that OOP off the left needle all knitting is is just a series of loops we're basically scooping the loop off the left needle wrapping the yarn around taking the loop off so you're taking the loop off and in the process you're creating or adding one new loop onto the loop so it's a bunch of loops basically so you want to do this to the end of the row hopefully it's clear what you're doing feel free to pause and yell at me or rewind and watch it again but hopefully those first examples was clear but you're just gonna do this to the very end of the row and eventually you're gonna have a nice little build up of rows and once we get a couple more rows in it'll be a lot more clearer what it is we're actually doing here when you reach the end of the row you'll have one last stitch so here I am at the end of the row I've got one last stitch here on my left handed needle all you do is you're just gonna knit it just like you did with the other one so come up through the loop along go from the left hand side go up through the bottom up along the back side and then wrap the yarn around the needle and scoop the loop off just like you would any of the normal ones when you're finished with that row like I just did you can kind of separate everything out nice and even and take a look at what we've done so we've knit that first the first stitches that we cast it on we've knit those so we've added an extra layer of loops onto those initial stitches that we cast it on so it's slightly thicker it's slightly longer and knitting is just growing this out so if this is a scarf we're just going to keep repeating this over and over again until it grows longer and longer so with that first row finished make sure that you have this nice you know form edge again if you have a twist or something from holding it it's gonna cause you some problems so make sure that you find the edge and all of your loops are nice and uniform and going in the same direction you've got this nice hard edge here on the end here what we're gonna do now is jump right into the next row so flip your work around like we did before so now you've got your working yarn or the yarn that's connected to the rest of the ball of yarn here and this is what we're gonna use make sure you don't use the tail ends of the yarn on accident that would cause you some problems so we're gonna hold the work again with our left hand and we're gonna jump right into this new stitch here that's on the end so once again we're gonna do the same exact thing that I showed you before take the right needle put it through the first loop and come up along the back side then take the yarn wrap it around the right needle and it's gonna be pulled through the two needles between the X and then take the right needle and we're gonna scoop this loop off of the left needle so come down through the loop and pull it off once again take the right needle put it to the left of the loop on your left needle put it through the loop and come up along the backside to create the X and then take the yarn wrap it around at the right needle pull it through between the X and scoop off the loop go down and scoop it off and then as you're going along you can kind of slowly push the rest of the stitches up towards the end of the needle that should kind of naturally happen but in case it doesn't you can give them a little nudge but we're doing the exact same thing that I showed you on the first row we're just putting the needle through wrapping the yarn around going down and scooping the yarn off go through the loop wrap it around and then go down and scoop it off go through along the backside wrap around go down and through the loop so hopefully this is becoming clear to you if this is your first time attempting to knit it can be confusing it can feel very uncomfortable in your hands and like you might be getting kind of sweaty and then like the needles and the yarn starts to do that squeaky thing that's like really uncomfortable but I promise eventually you'll find a way that's most comfortable for you for holding your yarn and holding your needles and eventually you'll just be knitting your own socks but it's soon I mean this is really it this is knitting this is all you really need to know if you want to knit something this video is actually I guess technically a reboot I guess you could say of my first video on this channel or I did a how to knit video and that was back in 2014 so a long time ago and I wanted to do a new video just because that video was my first video and so I kind of didn't know what I was really doing and I feel like now I can maybe explain things a little better hopefully and that first video had like an annoying background soundtrack that a lot of people didn't like and so hopefully this new video is at least slightly a better explanation but the cool thing is is that the the technique doesn't change I mean I'm showing you the exact same thing that I showed you in that video from a long time ago so you can go back and watch that video I'm showing you the exact same pattern of scooping off the loops and adding new loops to it so when you're finished with that second row now you can see a little bit more of what we're doing we've built up the row a little bit more so we've got more stitches we've got two layers of stitches now and I'm just gonna keep going so I'm gonna flip my work over again so you always want the working yarn or the yarn that's attached to the ball of yarn you always want that part of the yarn at the very start of your needle so you can dive right into it and start knitting the third row yeah the third row and I'm going to now do not be alarmed I'm not like super fast knitting I have pressed fast forward and what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna just speed through a couple more rows just so I can grow this out a little bit more and you can get a better idea of what your project should look like as you go along so this is what I have after knitting a few more rows I think I did maybe five or six more rows here and hopefully this gives you a clearer picture of what it is we're doing here so you're basically building up these rows of loops and you should have this kind of nice uniform fabric of little bumps that are all in these nice little rows and it should look the same on either side so you've got the same pretty much the same look on either side it's okay obviously if you've messed up or if you've got a little bit of gap here or there even mine's not perfect here like at the beginning and on the edges it's not as clean as it totally could be but that's totally fine it's knitting it's not the end of the world it's supposed to be just a fun meditative thing that you're doing really so from here I'm just gonna keep doing what I was doing I'm going to go right into my rows and keep knitting and making it longer and longer and the more rows you do the more this is gonna grow out and at least from mine this could be a very skinny scarf but it could be a scarf if I make it long enough so you can do that your other option would be to finish it up if you want to learn how to cast off and actually learn how to get the project off of these needles I've got another video up that I'll show you where I actually walk you through how to cast off the stitches so how to end the project you don't just slip the needles off obviously there is a certain way of getting the project off of your needle so in that video I cover that so feel free to check that out if you want to learn how to finish up your knitting project the other option is to learn the second stitch in knitting so knitting is basically two stitches this first stitch that you've just learned now in this video is called the knit stitch so knitting the second stitch to learning is called the purl stitch pyou r-l and that stitch is kind of mm not quite the opposite of the knit stitch but it works the yarn a different way and when you combine that purl stitch with the knit stitch you can create different types of fabrics so that's how you get like a ribbed sweater or how you can make what's kind of how you can make cables or the stockinette stitch that you see in like normal t-shirts and that kind of thing that is the combination of knitting and purling so if you want to learn how to do that second stitch it is a little bit more complicated than the knit stitch but it's basically the same principles it's just a different movement of the needles if you want to learn the purl stitch check out that video if you want to learn how to finish casting off your project check out my video on how to cast off your knitting otherwise just keep on knitting until this grows into a named enormous scarf hopefully that was helpful and now you are a knitting master well on your way to knitting your own pair of socks or hat remember to Like and subscribe if you found this to be particularly helpful and also definitely check out my videos that I have that kind of build off the basics of knitting if you want to learn how to knit socks or not I've got videos for that too otherwise I will see you next time

Channel: RJ Knits

Views: 5,387,159

Rating: 4.8589578 out of 5

Keywords: knitting, knit, how to, how to knit, diy, scarf, hat, knitting basics, knitting 101, rj knits, crafts

Id: p_R1UDsNOMk

Length: 21min 53sec (1313 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 24 2018