Have you ever considered learning how to knit? It’s a great way to relax, plus it’s incredibly rewarding. Even if you’re a beginner, knitting a blanket is totally within your reach. With just a few materials and some patience and practice, you can create something beautiful. Let’s get started!
Step 1: Gather Your Supplies
Before you can start knitting, you need the right supplies. You will need yarn (in the color/color combination of your choice), needles that match the weight of your yarn, scissors and stitch markers (optional). To find out which type of needles to use with your yarn, refer to the label on the wrapper—it should tell you what size needle is needed for that specific yarn.
Step 2: Cast On (aka Starting Your Project)
Once you have all of your supplies ready to go, it’s time to begin knitting! Start by making a slip knot and placing it onto one needle. Take the other needle and insert it into the loop created by the slip knot. Then wrap your yarn around this second needle and pull through both loops on the needle. This is called casting on and it’s essentially how you create each stitch in your project!
Step 3: Learn Basic Stitches (Knitting & Purl)
Now that you know how to cast on stitches, let’s learn two basic knit stitches—knitting and purling! To create a knit stitch, you need to pull yarn through a loop from back to front. This will form a “V” shaped stitch. To do this on knitting needles, insert the needle from left to right with the yarn held in the back. To form a purl stitch, the yarn is pulled through a loop from front to back. This creates a bump at the base of the resulting stitch. You can achieve this on your knitting needles by keeping the yarn in front and inserting the working needle into the next stitch from right to left. A purl stitch is the exact opposite of a knit stitch. These two stitches are used over and over again in most knitted projects!
Step 4: Increase & Decrease Stitches
As you start to create more complex patterns with multiple colors or shapes, chances are good that at some point during your project, you will need to increase or decrease stitches. To increase stitches means adding additional loops on one or both needles; while decreasing stitches means removing existing loops from one or both needles--allowing for an easier transition between different sections of patterning.
Step 5: Bind Off & Block Your Blanket
Once all of these steps are complete, all that remains is binding off (or finishing off) each row with a final stitch before cutting off any remaining yarn from the end of each row. Once this step is done, all that's left is blocking--which involves stretching out any areas where there may be extra slack or bunching up--to even out the overall look of your finished product!
Knitting can seem intimidating when faced with all those tools and techniques--but don't worry! With some patience and practice anyone can learn how to knit a blanket for themselves or loved ones. And once completed not only will this be something beautiful but also it will be an accomplishment worth celebrating! So pick up those needles today--start creating something special!