Knitting is worked in rounds (the equivalent of rows in flat knitting) in a spiral. When I have spent hours working on knitting a sweater, I want to make sure it looks as good after a dozen washes as it did the day I was knitting it.
Special kits are available that allow circular needles of various lengths and diameters to be made as needed; rigid ends of various diameters may be screwed into strands of various lengths. It is also best to use the basic knitting stitches, just knit and purl until you are use to knitting. Flat knitting is usually used to knit flat pieces like scarves, blankets, afghans, and the backs and fronts of sweaters.
For comparison, woven garments stretch mainly along one direction (the bias) and not very much, unless they are woven from stretchable material such as Lycra. In the simplest knitted fabrics, all of the stitches are knit or purl; these fabrics are denoted as stockinette and reverse stockinette, respectively. Lace may be illustrated briefly with two characteristics:
There are many sizes and types of needles - single pointed, double pointed, circular, and cable needles. More complicated techniques permit large fields of colour (intarsia, for example), busy small-scale patterns of color (such as Fair Isle), or both (double knitting and slip-stitch colour, for example).
Once you learn the basics of knitting, you will want to continue progressing to more advanced stitches and knitting patterns. Most new knitters should start with some of the basic patterns listed above and work on mastering basic stitches.
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