Hello friends!
I hope you enjoyed the colourful blog last week while I was away! I got back into the studio yesterday and we spent most of the day looking at the new website – I can’t wait to share that with you in a few weeks – so I’ll be honest and admit that I’ve not had loads of time to write a waffly blog this week. (I can hear you cheering from here! 😜) I didn’t think anyone would be bothered about seeing holiday snaps so I figured I’d share what I’ve been working on today instead….
What d’ya reckon?
The new website has given me a real boost to finally sort some of the content I’ve been meaning to for ages and I thought I’d start with some basic tutorials to help beginner knitters. If you’re seasoned knitters it won’t all be relevant for you but I’d LOVE to hear what other tutorials you’d like and I can work on them, also any feedback is welcome, I’m definitely learning as I go and would love to know how we can improve the tutorials and everything we offer you in general! Feel free to leave a comment below or to email us 🙂 THAAAANKS x
Knitting tutorials
On the new site we’ll have a new ‘knitting knowledge’ page – that will hopefully be easier to navigate as it grows – and one of my priorities with it is to make it super clear and simple for someone who’s new to knitting. I’m working on a section to take you through step by step so thought I’d throw it into a blog too in case it’s useful. This way I can also get feedback in time in case it’s still shit! So here goes, if you’re new to knitting hopefully this will help…
We’ll go through it step by step with videos and then at the bottom there’s some printable sheets that you can download and use if you prefer (because we all learn differently and that’s great) all the videos are about 1 minute long because no one likes a long winded tutorial.
They are subtitled so you can pause them at different sections and see what’s going on and they don’t have sound because you don’t need me shouting at you!
Step one: Casting on
We need to start by Casting On. Casting on basically means creating your stitches so that you can start knitting them – kind of like the foundation of knitting.
There are a few different ways to cast on but I’m only going to show you one to keep it simple. This way is my favourite because it’s really similar to knitting so once you know how to cast on, you can basically knit already (genius!)
➡️ Your knitting pattern will tell you how many stitches to cast on ⬅️
Step two: Knit stitch
Right, once you’ve learnt to cast on and you’ve got all your stitches,you now want to knit them.
The technique of Knitting is similar to casting on 💪🏼. We put the needle in the same way and wrap the yarn around the same way but then instead of putting the new stitch on the left hand needle (to create another stitch), we transfer it to the right hand needle. You’ll slowly (or quickly if you’re a genius!) move all your stitches from your left hand needle to the right hand needle to knit a row.
➡️ You can knit entire projects with just this one stitch…so that’s great ⬅️
With this one stitch, you can now make a scarf or a snood!
Step three: Purl stitch
Once you can knit (That’s GREAT!) you can start to introduce the other stitch – Purl Stitch.
With the combination of Knit and Purl stitches, you can knit almost anything (now that’s exciting!) Purl is kind of the same as knit stitch but a bit opposite. You need to keep your yarn at the FRONT of your work (unlike Knit where you keep it at the back) and you put your needle in the other way but other than that, it’s pretty darn similar. Here’s the video….
➡️ With these two stitches you can basically take over the world ⬅️
Holy moly, so many patterns you can try now!
Step four: Cast off
The last thing you need to know is how to Cast Off. Casting off is just finishing your knitting, it means you can take it off the needles without it unravelling.
Just like casting on, there are a few ways to do it but I’m just going to show you my fave. This way of casting off is super simple and leaves you with a beautiful plaited edge. YUMMY.
➡️ If you can knit, you can cast off ⬅️
In case you learn better with pictures & Instructions here are some downloadable printables…
Click on any of them to enlarge them and/or right click and select ‘save to downloads’ to download and print them off.
What can I knit now?
So once you know the 4 steps of knitting you’ll be away. You can then start filtering in some other techniques… which I wouldn’t even look at until you can do these 4 steps. It’s one of those things where, if you look at it altogether it feels overwhelming but if you take it one step at a time you can smash it!
There’s HEAPS more help on our Knitting Knowledge Page and our magical Facebook Group is so helpful (just search Lauren Aston Designs Knitting Club on Facebook)
With just those 4 steps you can easily knit any of these projects…
What can I knit next?
After you’ve nailed the basics (and maybe had a bash at some of those patterns 👆🏼) I’d recommend hitting our Knitting Knowledge page and learning Shaping (basically not knitting in a straight line. Then you can knit any of these…
If you’re still keen
You could then visit the Knitting Knowledge Page again and learn how to ‘Knit In the Round’ – this means you don’t have seams. It’ sounds a lot more complicated than it is (doesn’t everything in knitting!) but basically you have needles with a cord so you join the start and end of your row to make a circle and then you can keep knitting round and round… it’s super fun once you get going! then you can make any of these…
You’re on a roll!
I mean, to be honest. By this point you can knit better than me so you can tackle any of our patterns no problem. You’ll probably have a bit of a yarn stash and a needle collection and you’ll officially be addicted….Welcome friend.
Right, I said I wouldn’t waffle and then I waffled. I’m going to head off now. I hope that way helpful, do let me know! Speak next week,
Take Care,
L x
