knitting garter stitch

Knitting for Beginners: How To Knit + Garter Stitch

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By far the most basic and easy knitting stitch is the garter stitch. Often times, you see beginner knitters tend to knit up a garter stitch scarf. It’s because its such an easy stitch for beginners to start with. Once you get lots of practice in with garter stitch, learning more stitches will be even easier.

So why is garter stitch so easy? Because all you’re doing is knitting the stitches. There is no other stitch techinque, just knit! Really this post isn’t just teaching you about garter stitch but also how to knit!

Related Blog Posts: Easy cast on stitches for every knitting project

How to knit

If you followed along on my how to cast on blog post where we learned how to cast on via the knitting on method, you’ll notice a huge similarity between these 2. They are almost the same, just one small different step.

  1. In our left hand, we have a knitting needle that is holding our stitches. The right needle should be empty. Insert the right needle into the stitch on the left needle from behind.
  2. Taking the working yarn, we are going to wrap the yarn around the right needle from back to front.
  3. Wrap the working yarn around the right needle and pull the yarn down so it touches the stitch on the left needle.
  4. Now with the right needle, grab the yarn that we wrapped around the needle in the previous step. Pull down with the working yarn wrapped around the needle.
  5. Pull the working yarn through the stitch on the left needle. It should almost look like there is an 8 on your needles.
  6. Instead of slipping the stitch onto the needle as you would do for the knitted cast on, we are going to push the stitch on our left needle off the hook (slip the stitch off)
  7. And now we have knitted our first knit stitch onto the new working needle.

Time to knit garter stitch!

Knitting garter stitch is a very simple stitch for beginners. I mean, this stitch is all about just knitting. All you are doing when you knitting up garter stitch is knitting back and forth. It’s that easy!

So when you go onto the second row, you’re just knitting all over again.

Knitting up with the garter stitch is the easiest and most simple way to knit. It also tends to go fast as all you are doing is knitting and aren’t adding in any other knitting techniques like purling.

With this knitting knowledge, you can now knit blankets, scarfs, dishcloths, and plenty more.

I tend to enjoy using garter stitch when I knit up our dishcloths as its a very quick and easy knit up that I can knit up in less than a day.

Happy knitting,

Kate