Knitting Exercises for Beginners: Rice Stitch and Garter Stitch

Learn these basic knitting exercises from scratch, with Siempre Oveja

One of the first things you need to do when learning to knit, is to create a sampler of different kinds of stitches. This allows you to practice and gives you a reference to look at when you’re not sure how a stitch works or what the finished version looks like.

Joice is the creator behind knitting brand Siempre Oveja (Forever Sheep). She’s passionate about color, texture and spheres. She teaches you basic rice stitch and garter stitch exercises in this video, so you can master some of the most common knitting techniques. You’ll need some wool and a pair of knitting needles, and you’ll learn how to cast on. Don’t miss it!

1. Materials

- 10 mm knitting needles
- Thick wool
- A pair of scissors

2. Casting on

The first basic step you need is to be able to cast the yarn onto your needles. Start by making a V with the thread and your needle between your fingers and starting to knit as you can see in the video. You need to create 15 stitches.

3. Rice stitch

Now you’ve cast on, it’s time to get started on the first exercise: rice stitch. It looks a bit like this: xxx.

Don’t knit the first stitch, simply pass it from one needle to the other. Let’s knit the first rice stitch into the front of the stitch, following the instructions in the video. The next stitch goes the other way around, knitting into the back of the stitch, and you keep alternating until you get to the end of the row, where you knit the right way round again. Remember to keep your index finger straight throughout the whole process, to help you achieve even stitches. You need to create 2 stitches to make the rice pattern.

When starting on the second loop (having remembered not to knit the first stitch) you’ll realize that it’s blocked. This shows you that it needs to be knitted the right way around. If it isn’t blocked, you have to knit it from the back.

Now you’ve got both loops, do another stitch to see how it looks.

4. Garter stitch

Like in the previous exercise, the first thing you need to do is cast on 15 stitches. Once that’s done, you’re ready to start on the pattern.

In this exercise you need to work on both sides, but you always keep going in the same direction. Remember never to knit the first stitch. Grab hold of your yarn and place the needle through the loop, then pick up the thread and cast it off. Have a look at the video to see how to do this. Keep going until you’ve finished the row. When it’s done, you need to finish the second row in order to see the complete stitch.

Carry on knitting until you’ve finished 5 rows, which will be big enough for you to keep in your sampler for future reference.

Love this video? If you’d love to learn how to knit an oversize jacket that tells a story, don’t miss Siempre Oveja’s online course: Introduction to Knitting for Oversized Garments.

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