...Feels a lot better than just sitting there watching the walking dead... (intro)
Hi and welcome to Knit With Hannah. I'm Hannah. I'm here with knitting natter to help you learn to knit
the easy way. Well I thought today we could talk about first few projects you can knit if you're
a beginner. I know a lot of you at the moment are getting really excited about starting to knit
and I absolutely love that. It is in the northern hemisphere the beginning of the knitting season
and the end of August, beginning of September really sees a growth in knitting, and that
means you're wondering what to knit. Many of you will have started with the Knitting Basics For
Beginners class and here on YouTube that is very simply putting stitches on the needles
and starting to knit. That's the springboard and that's once you've got that down and you feel
more confident with that you can start knitting other things as well. So I thought we could go
through a few things today I've got samples here sat to show you. Some of them are in kits, and you
can get them in digital patterns as well. I thought it'd be a great idea to show you the actual items
as well as just talk you through some ideas that you could knit up. What do you, what have you
knitted as an initial first knit? Well, as a first knit I put on 11 or 12 stitches on my needle and
I started knitting. That's exactly what I suggest you do in Knitting Basics For Beginners and I
love the comment I got a couple of weeks ago which said "I got overexcited and I knitted 33 stitches,
cast on 33 and I just started knitting!" Don't worry about it. If you have more
than 11 or 12 stitches don't worry about it. You can start knitting or you can take some
of them off the needle and start knitting from there. Start again. No problem with that at all.
So, once you started knitting what's next? What I do suggest is something like the Classic Stitch
Bookmarks Kit, and you could also get this as a course. We have a digital course over on the Knit
With Hannah Academy and this lets you knit up lots of different bookmarks and these bookmarks are in
beginners stitch patterns. You may think "Well I already know stitches. What do you mean?" Well let
me just show you: here in one of my favorite books - this is my grandmother's book actually.
My mum gave it to me recently. I love using these bookmarks. See, I could only find this one .
They're dotted around the house, would you believe it, in lots of different books, but this is the one
that's closest to me. I've got another one over there, but, here we go. This is called long garter
stitch and it's a very simple stitch. You're using exactly the same stitches as you use very basic
stitch, and if you get the kit you get it all in the leaflet here, how to knit these different
items, garter stitch long garter stitch, moss stitch, double moss stitch. There are six patterns in total.
Now, starting from that means you're knitting small items, and as you may have seen in a few of
my other videos that's where I suggest you start, especially if you have small hands, it means that
you are able to hold the needles quite happily, and you can just springboard from there. Start
with a small item with a knit stitch and then start saying "I'll add in some different stitches
and I'll just mix it up a bit." That's where you can start. If you want to go a little bit further; I
know a lot of you will have basically said "I want to knit quickly. I'm fed up with it taking so long,"
but I would suggest you do one thing first and it's something that will take a whole ball of yarn.
This is something from the Home Collection that I introduced this summer into the shop. This
is a very simple beginner's face cloth. This takes almost a whole ball of yarn
but it's a really usable item, something that you will use every single day if you want to, and
in the kit you'll get three balls of yarn, and you can just knit three of these up if you want to
and totally ignore the rest of the pattern. In the rest of the pattern you can knit up makeup
pads as well, but if you just want to knit three face cloths to just get you started, and this
is a great place to start to. Move on from your bookmarks to using a whole ball of yarn. It will
take less time than knitting something that takes three or four balls of yarn. Once you've done that
you can actually feel the confidence. If you make a few mistakes on this, rather than noticing mistakes
once you've knitted something up in three or four balls of yarn, you may feel a bit wary about using
what you've knitted if you see mistakes in it later, but something like this if you see a mistake
in it it's one ball of yarn and it's not taking you as long as it might to knit something
else. So, yeah, practice with this kind of thing and it's usable. Like I said you can use it daily, just
wash it in between uses, so this is the kind of thing i would suggest next. This is cotton yarn.
We use good quality cotton yarn and we sell good quality yarn in the shop. I've looked through
a lot of different yarns and some cotton yarns are better than others and they'll be more easy
for knitters to use than others as well. So this is what i would suggest next:
if you're an adult or a teenager, you've got large enough hands you may feel that you want to start
knitting with thicker yarn and thicker needles. Let me get the needles that I'm thinking about.
So these kind of needles are 10 millimetres. This is what you'll need if you're knitting up a
scarf like this. Here we go. I've got lots of scarves here.
So this is one, a very simple one, which is four balls of yarn. We just change color in the middle.
Bit of a Doctor Who scarf, but it's just the two colors. That is called the big long
scarf. Four balls of yarn, stick your stitches on the needle, and knit. This is a great knit
for you if you want to get your tension right, if you feel like you're more than happy to just
sit there and knit something over a couple of weeks, and it's also something to knit alongside
another project that might be a bit more difficult. This is something you could probably knit
when you need less focus, when maybe if you're a little bit tired at the end of the day, bring this
kind of thing out, the kind of thing I would bring out at the end of the day and say "I know how to
do the knit stitch". I would just sit here and knit rather than looking at complicated lace patterns
or trying to change color, anything like that, so, as a beginner that feels easier, and as a beginner you
may want to take something a little bit more challenging when you have a little bit more
focus, when you're not tired, and have something like this alongside it that you can pick up
and just give yourself the self-care that knitting gives you just because it's a meditative
craft, and it's something that feels a lot better than just sitting there watching the walking dead (laughs)
or something like that! So, that's one of the scarves, and the other one here as you can
see is the beginner's tassel scarf. This has got three colors in. It changes color more often
and this is where you will start to count the rows and just take a little bit more care as
you're knitting, but, fewer stitches on the needle, it's not as wide and you make the tassels at the end.
It's a really good transition piece from saying "I'm very beginner. I'm only using one ball of yarn,,
two, I'm going to use a few more balls of yarn before I start using more complicated patterns,"
because, yes, you can add lace, yes, you can add cable. Not very far from starting to
knit, maybe three or four months if you're actually dedicated, you know, knitting on a regular basis,
then you'll have picked up enough to say "OK, I'll add a little bit more pizzazz to your knitting,"
and that is when you say "OK, I can do this." I hope that's been helpful for you. So take it one
step at a time as a beginning knitter. Knit up small things first Knit up, knit something
up with a portion of a ball of yarn, then knit something up maybe with a whole ball of yarn, and
once you've gone through the stages you can start adding the thicker needles and the thicker yarn,
and then knitting a jumper straight off when you've never knitted anything before, it can feel a
bit overwhelming unless you have the brain space for it, and I would definitely suggest doing
other things first. Other things first so that you get to grips with holding the yarn, holding
the needles, making sure that the stitches feel the same from beginning knitting something to the
end of knitting something. That is what small items can help you with, and items like scarves can help
you with as well. Thank you so much for joining me today. I really do hope that's been help for you,
helpful. Let me know in the comments below. I would like to know when did you start knitting and what
is it that you knitted first? Was it successful? Are you really proud of it? I bet you are! I knitted
something from a very beginner knitter. I'm going to go and get that too. Let me show you.
Here I am. This is the very first thing that i knitted. Yes, this is the very first thing that
i knitted, and believe it or not there's holes in it, there's, oh, I get, suddenly I get more stitches
and I just, it's, it's a mess, but I'm so proud of it because I got so far. I said "I'm not giving up .
I want to change colour and I want to carry on, and i want to change colour," and you see the difference
here. It's neat. I don't suddenly gain more stitche. It doesn't look ugly and mismatched.
That is where I am proud of myself, to see that I went from there to there, and I
improved so much. It doesn't take long, and you can do the same. So, there you go!
Let me know. I hope you're proud of even picking up the stitches and starting to knit
because it's such a benefit. If you were watching the Olympics and I mean, whether this news went
around the world I don't know, but Tom Daley knitting, it was an absolute inspiration. He knew
that knitting has helped him so much with his anxiety, with keeping calm in between competitions,
and it was an absolute joy to see someone. He actually said in the interview "I'm so proud of
representing Great Britain and I'm so proud of representing great
knitting." "Hear hear to that!" I say. Thank you for joining me today. How many times have I said that? (laughs)
This is the end of the video I promise! I will see you again soon. Bye for now. Happy knitting! (outro)