Knitting the Garter Stitch

Toni Lipe: Hi, I am Toni Lipe with Toni's Design Studio. Today, we are talking about how to knit. We have talked about the knitting equipment we need, we have talked about casting, on holding our yarn and knitting needles, we have talked about the knit stitch. This is what our swatch would look like, if we completed it with simply the knit stitch. I have cast on 25 stitches and knitted approximately 20 rows. As you can see, this is bumpy on one side, as it is on the other. It's reversible completely. This is called the Garter Stitch. When you knit every single row, it is a Garter Stitch. The nice thing about a Garter stitch is that it doesn't roll, it doesn't curl it stays nice and flat and this is what your finished product would look like. Very very nice.

Another type of knitting that you see in a lot of sweaters is called a Stockinette Stitch. This is when you knit one row, purl the next row. Knit one row, purl the next row so each row is an alternate knit-purl knit-purl. Now, this swatch as you will notice has a tendency to curl a little bit as Stockinette stitch does. On the public side, it's nice and smooth and the stitches look like a series of V's and that's what you see in a lot of sweaters. On the reverse side, it's bumpy not quite the same as the Garter Stitch but it's definitely got a bumpier look to it. So, this is the what we call reverse Stockinette stitch. Sweaters also look like this too sometimes.

To achieve the Stockinette stitch with these smooth V's, we have to learn a new stitch called the Purl Stitch. The knit stitch and the purl stitch are the two basic stitches in knitting. Everything, else are variations on those stitches. If you can master both of these stitches and feel comfortable with them, you have come a long way to knitting many many types of garments.