The Knit Stitch

Hi there. I'm Jen Lucas for The Knitting Circle. In this video I'm gonna show you how to work the knit stitch. In knitting there are two basic stitches, the knit and the purl. Once you have these two stitches mastered, you can knit just about anything. Even just knowing how to do the knit stitch you can knit a ton of different projects. In this video I'm gonna show you how to work the knit stitch in both the English or throwing method and the continental or picking method. So let's go ahead and get started and learn how to work the knit stitch. We're gonna go ahead and learn how to do the knit stitch. There's two common ways that you will work the knit stitch and that's using the English or throwing method which has the working yarn in your right hand or the continental or picking method which has the yarn in your left hand. It really is personal preference. I encourage you to try both if you're new to knitting and figure out which one works best for you. For some people, the yarn and the right hand works better. For some people they yarn in the left hand works better. Really doesn't matter. We're gonna be creating the same stitch either way. So here I have some stockinette stitch where I have worked knit stitches on the right side and purl stitches on the wrong side. And this is most commonly when people think of knitting, this is what they think of. And so the knit stitch is creating these little stitches here, these little Vs. And on the right side it's a nice smooth stitch that we're gonna create. So I'm gonna go ahead and show you how to work the knit stitch. We're gonna wanna have our yarn oriented so that it's behind our work or it's to the back. I've already worked some knit stitches. So it's just naturally going that way. So the yarn will be towards the back. To work the English method and having the yarn in my right hand you can tension the yarn with your pinkie and then your pointer finger, whatever feels comfortable to you. Everyone tensions their yarn a little bit differently. So we have the yarn on our index finger. To work the knit stitch we're gonna insert the needle. We're gonna go from front to back through the stitch this way. We're gonna take our yarn, wrap it around the needle. Then we're gonna bring the right needle down and through that loop that's on the left-hand needle. And then we're going to take the loop that's on the left needle and drop it. And so what we're left with is this new stitch on the right hand needle. Again, inserting our stitch taking our yarn wrapping it around, bringing our right-hand needle down and through that loop on the left needle. And then taking the loop on the left needle off. And you can see we're creating new stitches. Do a couple more for you using the English method. And you'll find everyone holds the yarn a little bit differently or holds their needles a little bit differently. So it's really about finding what feels comfortable to you and what gives you nice even stitches. So now I'm gonna go ahead and do that knit stitch with the yarn in my left hand, using the continental method. Again, you can tension with your pinkie and then bring the yarn up with your pointer or index finger. So it's the exact same stitch. We're just we just have the yarn in our left hand now. So again we're gonna just go in to the stitch. Notice our yarn was still to the back cause we're doing the same stitch. We're gonna insert our needle. We're gonna wrap the yarn around. We're gonna bring it through and then drop it off the needle. And that's it It's the exact same thing. Some people find it more comfortable and quicker to have the yarn in their left hand. Some people like it in their right. So again, to do the knit stitch we're gonna keep the yarn to the back there. We're gonna insert our needle from front to back through the loop on the left-hand needle, wrap the yarn around bring that loop through the stitch on the left-hand needle and off. With a little bit of practice this actually is pretty easy the knit stitches are pretty easy one to work. And there you go. Now you're knitting. You know how to do the knit stitch. That's the knit stitch now you're knitting. Don't be discouraged if you don't get it on the first try it really does take a little bit of practice. It's like learning any new skill just practice a little bit each day. And before you know it, you'll be on your way to knitting lots of great projects. I'm Jen Lucas for The Knitting Circle. I hope that you enjoyed this video. And be sure to check out our other videos to learn lots of other great knitting techniques.