The first thing you are going to need is some “cast on” stitches – if you would like some help with this take a look at my “Back to Basics: Casting On” post. Here’s a quick reminder of my knitting rhyme too.

When you first start knitting, I think it’s best to keep to a small number of stitches. As you will see in my pic below I’ve gone for 10. Okay, are you ready for your first full row of knitting?

1. Put the needle with its cast on stitches into your left hand and take your other empty needle in your right. Keep your yarn to the back of your knitting. Push the tip of your right hand needle in through the centre of your first stitch from front to back.

For those using a knitting rhyme to help remember the steps this is “In through the front to knit a stitch“.

2. Take your yarn behind the needles and wrap it under and around the right hand needle. You may need to use your left hand to stabilise both your needles! This is the “Wrap your yarn around the back to hitch” line of the rhyme.

3. Use the tip of the right hand needle to draw, or ‘tickle’ the drapped yarn through the loop on your left hand needle. This corresponds to “Catch the loop as you peek back through” part of the rhyme.

4. Keep the new loop you have made on your right needle and gently slide the old loop off your left needle into the gap between your pins. For those of you using the knitting rhymes,  “Then slide it off, away from you!“.

You should now have 1 stitch from your new row on your right hand needle and 9 (still to be stitched!) on your left hand needle. Repeat the steps above until you have 10 new stitches on your right hand needle.

 Voila! Just keep repeating this process until you have knitted as many rows as you need.

When it comes to the end of your pattern, if you need a reminder of how to cast off, check out my “Back to Basics: Casting Off” post.