Blog ·
Your first knitting project, and what actually makes it easier
Most people start with a scarf and give up halfway. Here is what we suggest instead, and why the yarn matters more than the pattern.
Almost everyone who comes in wanting to learn asks for the same thing: a scarf. It is the obvious first project — straight lines, no shaping, nothing to go wrong. And it is the project we most often talk people out of.
A scarf is six hundred rows of the same stitch. You will get bored somewhere around row eighty, put it in a bag, and find it two years later with the needles still in it. We have seen a great many of those bags.
Start with something that ends
A beanie takes an evening or two. A face cloth takes an afternoon. Both teach you the same stitches a scarf would, but you finish them — and finishing is the part that makes you want to start the next thing.
Our free patterns include both. The Basic Beanie is the one we hand to most beginners, and the Face Wash Cloth is the one we give to people who want to be certain they enjoy this before buying more yarn.
The yarn matters more than the pattern
This is the part nobody tells you. A simple pattern in difficult yarn is much harder than a complicated pattern in forgiving yarn.
What makes yarn forgiving for a beginner:
- Smooth, not fuzzy. Mohair hides your stitches, and you cannot fix what you cannot see. Leave it for later.
- Light in colour. Navy and black are hard on the eyes for hours at a time.
- Worsted weight. Thin yarn means more stitches and slower progress; very thick yarn splits and shows every unevenness.
- Wool, not acrylic. Wool has give. It forgives tight hands, and it can be unravelled and reused when something goes wrong — which it will.
We keep a few lines that tick all four. Ask, and we will put three in your hands so you can feel the difference before you decide.
You do not need to buy the needles first
People often arrive having already bought needles online, usually the wrong size for the yarn they then choose. Bring the pattern, or the idea, and we will work out the needles and the yardage together. Class materials, incidentally, are bought at the shop — all except the needles, which are yours to keep and reuse.
When it goes wrong
It will. A dropped stitch, a row that came out with the wrong number, a piece that is somehow wider at the top than the bottom.
Bring it in. Untangling a project that has gone sideways is genuinely one of the better parts of our week, and you do not need to be in a class for us to look at it. That is what the chair by the window is for.
If you would rather learn properly from the start, the beginner classes run most days, and they stay small enough that you are not waiting your turn.