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Instead of spending all your free time on the phone or playing electronic games, why not be productive and make something useful and pretty for yourself or someone you know? There are many small objects such as socks, hats, potholders, and other things that can be easily knitted in a few hours and don't require the tons of patience and planning that larger projects like sweaters or afghans require. They also make great gifts, showing that you put some of your time and energy into making something especially for the recipient.

To make something, you'll need a pair of needles, some yarn, and a pattern, and you'll need to learn the stitches to follow your pattern. Needles and yarn can be bought at any major grocery store or craft store, although craft stores like Michael's will offer a much better selection than grocery stores like Meijer that try to cater to everyone. It is useful to have needles in a few different sizes because patterns will generally call for a particular size. However, unless you are making something like socks that need the right shape, you can usually use whatever size needles you want and scale the project a bit to make it an acceptable size, so buying one pair of needles is enough to begin.

Usually if you have a specific project in mind, you should buy as much yarn as you need to complete the project so that you don't have to buy more yarn in the middle and have it turn out to be a slightly different shade. For smaller projects that require only one skein or less of a color, this is not an issue, however.

You will also need a pattern unless you are simply knitting a swatch, either for practice, or for gauging your yarn, meaning to find out how many stitches you produce per inch using a particular combination of yarn and needle size. There are many books of patterns out there, so I will not give any recommendations here. Another resource is certainly the internet though. Even sites like About.com have areas with knitting patterns. I found a very nice potholder pattern from About.com, for example. Patterns are usually written in a sort of knitting shorthand where "k#" means knit that number of stitches and "p#" means purl that number of stitches. More advanced techniques also have abbreviations, such as "k2tog" for "knit two stitches together.

You will also need a resource for learning the techniques. It is possible to learn from books or websites on your own, but they must have good illustrations, or it will be very difficult. I learned the knit stitch from a book myself, but it took much longer to learn purling. It is much easier to learn by simply having someone show you how to do it. The basic techniques are quite easy to learn and can be picked up in a very short time. After that, it is simply practice performing the techniques, combining them to produce beautiful patterns, and learning how to maintain a constant tension in the yarn to produce smooth, even work.

Knitting is a great hobby that teens, too, can learn. For just a few dollars and a bit of time, you can learn a skill that could occupy you for hours productively. It can be very relaxing to sit for a couple of hours and make a potholder.

Learn more about this author, Reiko Yukawa.
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