Hi there.
I’m just starting out knitting, and I’m a bit confused. Everytime that I’ve seen anything store bought that was knitted is made up of these pretty little uniform V looking things. But whenever I just do the garter stitch, there’s no little V stitches.
However, a friend was recently making socks and her “stockinette” stitch was producing the V’s. When I asked her what she was doing differently, she said nothing. And that it was the same as the garter stitch…
How do I get those craved after little V’s in my knitting!??!?!
garter stitch is knit on both sides. In order to do stockinette and get the V’s on one side, you need to do one row of knit, then turn and the next row in purl. I don’t have the link handy, but at the top of the screen if you go to videos and click on purl, it’ll show you how to do that stitch.
Then again, if you’re knitting on circular needles and knitting in the round, then all you need to do is knit and it will come out with little V’s. But if you’re knitting flat, you need to alternate knitting a row with purling a row.
When you knit something flat, you get stockinette by knitting one row, purling one row. It will curl, though, so if you’re making a scarf, you need to put a garter or seed stitch edge on the bottom, top and sides.
When you knit in the round, as with your friend, you get stockinette by knitting every round, since you’re always knitting on the right side.
Knit and purl are really just the front and back views of the same stitch. The v is the front of the stitch and is called the knit stitch (you insert the needle through the side of the stitch that is toward you and pull the yarn through). The back of the same stitch is the purl stitch (insert from the side facing away from you). When you purl you’re just forming the stitch so that the back side shows–like a bunch of kids linig up for a picture and one decides to turn his back to the camera.
