Learning to Knit: Stocking Stitch: Free Knitting Pattern for Stocking Stitch Roll Scarf

How to knit stocking or stockinette stitch

stocking stitch knitting

I said before the two main stitches in knitting are knit and purl or plain and purl depending where you come from. Here I'll show you how to add a purl stitch to your portfolio. Knitting a plain stitch for one row and purling each stitch on the next makes what is called a stocking stitch in the UK, stockinette in the US.

Knit one row, Purl one row alternately and you have stocking stitch. 

How to do a Knit Stitch: Garter Stitch

Learn to Knit a Knit Stitch

Knitted Christmas Neckwarmer 

If you break it down there are really only two stitches in knitting - knit and purl - everything else is adapted from this. Everyone starts with learning how to make a KNIT stitch. Some call it plain knitting as opposed to purl which I will cover later.

Once you have mastered this stitch you will be surprised just how much you can produce and I have added in this free knitting neckwarmer pattern you can knit in an hour or two - a great place to start and with almost instant gratification! So let's get started.

How I learned to knit

Memory of Learning to Knit

yarn and needles from pixabay

Like most people I learned to knit as a child. My mother was always knitting, socks, jumpers, scarves. Fascinated as I was by the process, she didn't teach me. That was left to my father.

Like many men, my father had learned to knit in the army. It was not uncommon in those days, and I believe sailors in particular did a lot of knitting on board ship. Dad took the long trip on a troop ship to India. It was during this time he and his colleagues learned to knit socks.

We used wool from an old jumper that had been pulled apart, and the wool then washed. We stretched it on a Shetland wool winder made by my dad, one I still have. With the wool then rolled into balls, I was off.

Dad taught me to cast on and started me off by knitting squares to make into a blanket. We found my knitting was quite slack so wouldn't follow the gauge on a pattern, so he taught me to knit into the back of my plain stitch. I do that to this day, largely because I think it looks nicer as well as being tighter.

He was a hard taskmaster, making me have each of the twenty two squares I knitted perfect. He taught me to crochet when we joined all those squares together and that blanket decorated my bed throughout my youth.

From then on there was no stopping me and for years everyone got knitted presents for Christmas and birthdays. Growing up in the 50s and 60s my family were always involved in crafts of some kind; mum knitted and sewed, my sister did embroidery and my dad make rag rugs.

Over the years I have tried many crafts but always come back to knitting. In general it went out of fashion for a time but it is good to see it becoming more popular again. There is at least one bar I know of in London where everyone knits, and I believe there are quite a few knitting cafes spring up. The number of new yarns on the market are wonderful and for the lifelong knitter, a real challenge. I wonder what my dad would make of them now.

Welcome to Beginners Knitting

How to Knit: Beginner Guides, Tutorials and Free Patterns

Welcome - I've been knitting since I was a child so I kind-of take it for granted. So I was a bit surprised when a close friend of mine expressed astonishment when I produced a knitted bedjacket for her mother's Christmas. "How did you do that!" was her first comment and I realised there are loads of people out there who were never given the opportunity to learn a skill that I take for granted. That, together with a new obscession with Pinterest has spurred me into starting this new blog.

Here I hope to help at least a few people learn the art of knitting and help them produce work they will be proud to use themselves or to give as gifts to friends and family.

What has struck me about the multitude of knitting sites on line is that very few of them are British. There are slight differences in terms and methods between the UK and US so I will be concentrating mainly on UK pattern terminology. That may mean in future converting some free patterns into UK terms.

I'll write about this more fully in another post but to get you started - you need to learn how to cast on and here is a short video with my Scottish accent to the fore.