I want to learn how to knit...

[magicmau5]

I've been crocheting for 23 years now, but I never learned to knit. Does anyone have some advice on how I can teach myself to knit? If you know how, did you teach yourself or take a class? Should I just use a YouTube tutorial video or buy a book? I'm not sure what to do since I was taught by someone else how to crochet.

[Bailey4]

You Tube is always an option.  I'd also suggest borrowing books from the library prior to purchasing.  You may find one type of book works better than another for learning.  Also you may find once you've learned you don't wish to keep some of the very basic how to books forever.  Therefore a loaner often works.  If you do decide to buy you know which books you won't like and you don't buy.

[Granny Square]

Hmm.  I actually learned to knit first, from my mom, but only the barest of basics - cast on, cast off, knit, purl.  I was a freshman in HS, I made a couple of muffler type scarves, and a hat hat was a simple rectangle sewn into a tube, gathered at the top and a pom pom added.  Later that year I learned to crochet from a friends' mom, and dropped the knitting and stuck with crochet....

....until about 10 years ago, which was (ahem)several decades later...hang on, I'm getting to my point...  I watched the winter Olympics and wanted to make a hat like the US team wore, and had found a knit pattern for it.  I was able to remember the basic stitches that I mentioned above, but had never read a knit pattern before so I found knittinghelp.com really helpful to learn the terms, and they have lots of videos so I was able to 'brush up' what I remembered.  So my point is, my recommendation is to try that site first.

A comment - there are several ways to wield those pointy sticks.  One is English or 'throwing' style, which is not the way I learned.  The way I learned has you tensioning the yarn exactly the way you do for crochet, in your left hand, which is called 'Continental' style.  Since you already crochet, I would steer you to trying that first.  

Pssst, knitting stitches are easy, they're more or less a slip stitch.  

edited to add link, and fix spelling

Edited December 12, 2021 by Granny Square

[Granny Square]

Forgot to add, a few years ago there was a 'fad' called knooking, which I haven't heard much about lately.  

Re: what I said about knit stitches being just a slip stitch, knooking is just knitting with a crochet hook, you just slip stitch one way for a purl, and another way for a knit.  It's real knitting, done with 1 hook with a string attached at the back end, the string acts as the second needle.

I tried it but didn't care for it, since I already knit I found working stitches off of a string, versus a needle, not an improvement on the process, but a lot of non-knitters seemed enthusiastic when it was popular.  It looks like you can still buy knook hooks, and books, on Amazon.

One of the ads said 'no more dropped stitches', which...I'm not sure why that would be true...but in any event, dropped stitches aren't always a bad thing.  I do it on purpose, I consider it a feature not a potential pitfall of the knitting process, because I can purposely drop down a column stitches to fix a mistake or an oddly tensioned stitch I spot a couple of rows down...I wish you could drop stitches in crochet, actually.

Edited December 12, 2021 by Granny Square

[Granny Square]

I just remembered there is a spot on Crochetville to 'talk knitting' here, scroll down a bit, it's under Crochet Discussion > Special Crochet and fiber techniques.  It's not very active, tho.

[NCcountrygal]

Continental Knitting for Beginners 1—Knit Stitch The Oma Way - YouTube

[NCcountrygal]

other cast ons

Cast On | KnitPicks.com

It's been decades  Like Granny Sq, I learned to knit very basic start from mom.  She also taught me very basic crochet .  Hook and chain and sc and then handed me a book best of my memory for the other basic stitches.  A ton of resources available.

 

 

[Tampa Doll]

You have gotten a lot of good advice here.  I was taught by my Mom.  She taught all us girls when we were very young, not teens yet, along with crochet.  I had trouble learning crochet, I loved kniting.  So I did not learn crochet (self taught) till I was 41. 

Knitting is not as hard as some people think.  It is like crochet, it takes practice.  Don't get frustrated, take your time and truthfully you can crochet your first row onto the needle.  

Plenty of help here if you need it.