How to Make the Basic Knit Stitch

How to Make the Basic Knit Stitch
Hi, I’m Kelsey. I’ve been knitting for 10 years and am a member of several knitting organizations. I’m going to show you right now how to do the knit stitch. The knit stitch is the most basic stitch in knitting. It’s so important that they named the whole hobby after it. If you learn the knit stitch, basically everything else flows off of that. If you do only this stitch, you’ll get what’s called garter stitch and you’ll get rows of bumps. It’s a reversible stitch and it works really great for scarves and things like that. When you start you always want to have your yarn coming off the right needle. And you’re going to be going into the stitches on the left needle, so you hold it like this. Hold the yarn however it feels comfortable. What I do is wrap it around my finger like this and then I hold the needle with the rest of my right hand. If that feels like a struggle to you, just try to get the yarn in the place that’s most comfortable. You’re going to take the tip of the right needle, and go into this stitch on the right needle. You go in this way and out that way so you end up with them crossed like this. Then you take your yarn and you loop it over your needle from left to right. So you go under this and over that back needle so you now have a loop on there. Now this is the trickiest part. You’re then going to pull this loop on the right needle through the stitch on the left needle. So you bring the needle down, and through here like this. Once you’ve got that, you slip the stitch off the left needle, and you’ve completed your first stitch. I’m going to show you again slow. A rhyme that I use why I’m teaching kids how to do this is “In the front door and out the back. Around the flagpole and out jumps jack.” And always remember to slip that stitch off or you’ll run into problems. I’m going to do it one more time. I go in from left to right. I wrap the yarn around from left to right. Then I bring the needle underneath and through that stitch. Then I slip it off the needle and tighten the tension with my right hand. That’s how you do the knit stitch.