how do i scarf? basic knitting instructions.
here is your getting-started guide, RB! and also anyone else who wants to learn to knit. i reckon it’ll take you about an hour to get going. how long it takes to finish the scarf depends on how long you want it and how fancy you get, but i reckon you’re looking at twenty or thirty hours of work total. don’t be afraid to screw up; yarn is reusable. :D
casting on is anything you do to get loops onto your needle to start with. there are lots of different ways to do it. i’ll just mention two here.
backwards loop cast-on: the quickest and easiest way. basically you just make a slip knot for the first loop, then twist loops onto the needle until you feel like you have enough. the downside is that the first row can be kind of tight to knit into. avoid that by making loose loops to start with and not tugging between stitches.
long tail cast-on: i mostly use this one. it makes a prettier edge, and the first row is easier to work. for something scarf-sized, don’t even angst about how long your tail is; wasting a few inches is nothing when you consider there’s like 300 yards in the ball of yarn i gave you, and if your tail’s too short it doesn’t take that long to start over. downside is it takes a little while to train your hands to do it automatically, so you’ll want to watch the video a few times.
the knit stitch: i’m just gonna declare by fiat that continental style is the best and link you those videos. it’s just a matter of which hand you hold the yarn in, anyway. the stitch itself is the same. all you’re doing is pulling a loop through a loop. that’s all knitting is. making loops.
the purl stitch: fandom secret: the purl stitch is the back of the knit stich. they are the same stitch. you’re just doing it from the other side.
stockinette stitch, aka stocking stitch, is the flat fabric you usually see for knitted stuff. it looks like this on one side
and although people usually call the first one the front, it can look pretty good the other way round, it’s up to you which way you like it.
you do stockinette stitch by knitting one row and purling one row; by which i mean, you knit across the ‘front’ and purl across the ‘back’. the downside is that it curls. if you do your whole scarf in stockinette, you’ll end up with a tube with rolled ends. not a disaster, and in fact i’ve seen patterns that do it on purpose. but it won’t be flat.
what if you want a flat scarf?
you have a few options here, all of which are essentially the same idea: mix knit and purl stitches so it balances the slight wedge shape of the stitches. here are a few of the basic ones:
alternate knit and purl, offset by one each row. which is to say, knit-1-purl-1 across your first row, and thereafter, whenever you meet a knit stitch, purl it, and whenever you meet a purl stitch, knit it. it makes a nice, warm, nubby fabric, and the one-two rhythm is relaxing to do. it’s what i use for washcloths.
this is the absolute easiest to do – you just knit every row and never purl. the only reason i didn’t put it first is because a lot of people start out doing garter stitch and don’t get used to purling, and then they kind of hate purling after that because it feels like extra effort. but if you want something completely mindless to work on while watching tv or reading, go for garter stitch. the downside is that it’s pretty thick and the fabric scrunches down, so your scarf will be shorter than it otherwise would be. (it won’t be stupid short, though, because i gave you plenty of yarn.)
ribbing is anything where you alternate knit and purl, and line them up on top of each other. you can knit-1-purl-1, knit-2-purl-2, you can do 1-2 or 2-3 or whatever you want. and you can switch it up occasionally to get effects like in the third picture, which is kinda neat. the downside of ribbing is that it narrows the fabric, since you’re essentially pleating it, so you’ll want to cast on more stitches to start with.
what if i am feeling cocky and want to get fancy?
anything that has a reasonably even ratio of knit-to-purl within an inch or two of the edges will lie flat. you can do a checkerboard, make wide ribs and stagger them over one every row or every other row to get a diagonal effect – you can even draw pictures using purl stitches as pixels:
you could make a sampler scarf where you try one thing for a while and then switch to a different thing. it is your scarf and you can do what you want with it. :D
you gave me two colors, how do i stripes?
the 'easy’ way to do stripes is simply to cut one color, leaving a tail long enough to sew in, and just start knitting with the next color. if you want to secure it a little better, you can knit with both together for a couple stitches. so that’s what you’ll do if you’re making wide stripes.
but there is a cool trick for making narrow stripes, which is especially gorgeous with multicolored yarn:
the example above is done in knit-one-purl-one ribbing, but it’ll work in any stitch. what you do is, you work across and back with one color, drop it but don’t cut it, work across and back with the other color, drop it but don’t cut it, pick up the first and repeat. the yarns leapfrog up the edge, but it barely shows. (it doesn’t show at all if you use a slipped stitch edge: just slip the last stitch of each row with the yarn held in front.)
eventually you will have Enough Scarf and want to stop. just like with casting on, there are a bunch of different ways to do it, but in essence anything that secures your loops so they don’t unravel is a functional castoff.
knitting off: the instructor in the video suggests using a larger needle size, and i only gave you one pair of needles, but fear not. just keep your yarn loose, and don’t worry about it; the tightness of your castoff is only important in things like socks and sweater neckbands where it needs to stretch to fit.
the big secret: i couldn’t find an illustration of this anywhere, but it’s handy if you just plain run out of yarn and don’t want to rip back a row. that 'pass the first stitch over the second’ part of the knitting off video? you can do that without knitting a new stitch first. just transfer your knitting to the opposite needle (so you reach the yarn tail at the end rather than the beginning), then pass stitches over each other zoop zoop zoop until you get to the end, pull the tail through, and voila. it won’t unravel.
there’s plenty more complexity to learn if you want it, and some people try to make themselves feel important by getting all uptight about it, but the truth is you can do amazing, awesome things for the rest of your life with nothing but what’s in this post. it’s all just loops! LOOPS ALL THE WAY DOWN!
