Unless you haven’t been paying attention, you’ll know that knitting is having a serious moment. Thanks to knitfluencers such as Katie Jones, Stephen West, Ella Emhoff and, of course, Tom Daley, the meditative hobby is riding a new wave of popularity. A big part of its appeal is making clothes and accessories – from waistcoats to hats, kids’ mittens and scarves – and knitting can also help improve focus, cognitive health and wellbeing.
Luckily, it doesn’t require a lot of kit to get started, and the essentials can be acquired for about a tenner. Here’s all the stuff you need – and the bits not worth wasting your money on.
Everything you need to start knitting
Yarn
It’s easy to get overwhelmed when it comes to yarn: which fibre? How thick? What colour? Superwash (this means the natural fibre has been chemically treated to withstand gentle machine washing without felting or shrinking) or not?
Different types of fibre feel different to work with. For instance, plant-based fibres such as cotton and linen have little elasticity and can be hard on the hands. Sheep’s wool has more give, but depending on the breed and how it’s spun, it has varying levels of softness. Alpaca yarn has plenty of give and is buttery soft, but can be a bit slippery to work with. When starting out, sheep’s wool is your friend.
Prices vary wildly. As a beginner, you don’t need to splurge out. Knitwear designer Enya Ødegaard suggests affordable woollen yarn for beginners because it “can be ripped back [undone] many times easily without damaging the yarn, whereas hairy and delicate yarns such as mohair are harder to undo, and the yarn will not be as nice afterwards”.
All yarn comes with information about what needle size is recommended, so try to find a DK (double knit) weight, which requires a needle size of approximately 4mm. It’s thick enough to show clear stitch definition and easy to handle. Drops Lima and Merino extra fine are affordable choices with a good colour range, as is CaMaRose Hverdagsuld.
Beginners’ yarns
£3.35 at the Wool Factory
£4.50 at Loop Knitting
Needles
Most people think knitting is done with two straight needles, but the circular needle – that is, two needles joined by a cable – is more popular within the knitting community. This is because they allow you to make flat pieces of fabric and tubes, such as for hats, mittens and socks.
A 4mm or 5mm circular needle with a 40cm cable will cover most beginners’ needs. With that, you can make sample squares, hats, scarves and mittens. Bamboo needles are less slippery than metal, so there’s less chance of dropping stitches. Metal needles are good for fast knitting as there is less friction between the yarn and the needle, but they’re better suited to more experienced knitters. KnitPro Basix Birch or KnitPro Symfonie 40cm needles are good circular choices. For straight needles, KnitPro 25cm Basix Birch (from £3.40 at Yarn Loft) will cover the basics.
Circular knitting needles
From £3.65 at Yarn Loft
From £7.65 at John Lewis
Other useful items
Tapestry needles are essential for weaving in loose ends. They also come in handy for more advanced techniques such as the sewn tubular castoff, a type of castoff that’s sewn rather than knitted, giving edges more stretch and a neater finish.
Tapestry needle set
£1.69 at Wool Warehouse
£1.99 at McIntosh
Other inexpensive useful tools such as stitch markers (I have a personal preference for gourd safety pins because they’re cheap and removable) are helpful to keep count of your stitches and to mark different sections. A tape measure and a small pair of scissors are also handy. Hobbycraft stocks a useful knitting accessory kit that has all the tools you need and a few extra bits.
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Accessory kit
What you don’t need
Hardcore knitters may choose to invest in certain items such as yarn swifts, which allow you to unwind skeins of yarn; ball winders, which wind skeins into balls; and blocking mats and pins, which are foam mats used to dry wet pieces of knitting pinned into shape. But these aren’t essential for beginners. You also don’t need stitch holders (used to hold live stitches) or cable needles (used to make cables in knitting) at first.
What to make
I would recommend simple but small patterns, such as tiny scarves. The Sophie scarf by PetiteKnit is a popular choice for a reason: it’s a simple garter stitch scarf (this means you only use the knit stitch, no purls) with tapered ends, which is relatively speedy to make and requires less than one ball of yarn. Other designs include Scarf No 1 by My Favourite Things (above), a triangular scarf with some simple lace, and Le Bandana by Aimée Gille, a triangular bandana that can be customised with stripes of different colours. Purl Soho has a good range of free beginner-friendly patterns.
Tips and tricks
It takes practice to get even tension (all the stitches of an even size) when you’re starting out. Beginners often knit tightly, but as you get more confident and relax into the repetitive motion of knitting, this will improve. All knitting patterns are made with two basic stitches: the knit and the purl. Armed with these two stitches and a few simple techniques for increasing and decreasing the number of stitches, you can do a lot.
Mistakes are inevitable, but luckily they are (almost) all fixable. Even experienced knitters drop stitches, knit instead of purl, or forget an increase here or a decrease there. Understanding how to read your work and fix errors is not always easy when you’re new, but try to look at your knitting and identify which stitches are knits, which are purls and why they look different.
Most knitting patterns will refer to gauge at some point. This refers to the density of stitches and rows, and it’s important to follow if you want a pattern to fit properly, but less important for items such as scarves and blankets.
Resources
Ravelry is a social platform for knitters and crocheters, with a database containing millions of patterns. You can browse other people’s projects, see what yarns are good for a pattern, and join groups and communities.
YouTube is an invaluable resource to get started. Very Pink Knits and Nimble Needles have many clear tutorials with good explanations.
Elise Damstra is an obsessive knitter, knitwear designer and podcaster behind the Purls Before Thyme podcast. She caught the knitting bug in 2019 and loves exploring new techniques and designs. She always has a project on hand, whether she’s on the bus, at the beach or at a pub quiz. Knitting gives her a sense of calm and acts as a form of meditation
