by Toni McKilligan

Created on: July 19, 2008   Last Updated: December 05, 2011

All you need are two sticks and a ball of yarn, right?

Well, learning to knit is as rewarding as it can be frustrating. It entails excellent dexterity and a lot of patience. Taking it one step at a time is the best approach and, like any good knitter will tell you, practice makes perfect!

You cannot knit until you learn to cast stitches onto your sticks, which are actually called needles, by the way. The cast on is the foundation of the fabric you will create as you knit. There are many techniques for casting on stitches. Each one creates a different edge and so must be chosen with care. The most common cast-ons link each stitch so that the edge will not unravel, but some, such as the waste yarn' cast on, create live stitches that are meant to be picked up later either to keep knitting or to be specially seamed onto another section of knitting.

There are only two basic stitches in knitting; the knit stitch and the purl stitch. All types of knitting and stitch patterns are based on these two humble techniques. Once they are mastered, anything is possible. Lace, cables, fancy stitch patterns, intarsia, fair isle, they all spring from combining knits and purls.

The process of knitting is one of weaving loops of yarn together to form fabric. The fabric and be manipulated at will to precise sizes and shapes by increasing and decreasing the number of stitches on the needles. This can be done at the beginning or end of a row of knitting, or throughout the row. Chevron patterns, for example, will have increases and decreases at specific intervals across the rows. Sleeves, necks and bodies are shaped with increases and decreases at the edges of the rows. In a sense, knitting is also sculpting, because there is no limit to the shapes that can be contrived.

The size of a piece of knitting is also dependant on the weight of the yarn and the size of the needles used to knit it with. Yarn weights range from fingering weight, which is very thin, to polar weight, which is very thick. Generally, the thicker the yarn the larger the needles are, though it is sometimes possible to knit lighter weight yarns on very large needles to create a loose and holey' garment.

Gauge is the term used to refer to the correct tension one needs in order to achieve the desired result. Every pattern will give the suggested size needles to use with the yarn specified. But every knitter will have a unique tension at which she knits. Some knitters knit loosely and some knit tightly. If they want to

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