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Loja Descoberta

Knitting for beginners, one stitch at a time

About

Loja Descoberta is a free resource for learning to knit from the very beginning. Every guide on the site is written for people who have never held knitting needles, or who tried once, ended up with twice as many stitches as they started with, and put the yarn away.

What you will find here

  • Learn to Knit guides that cover the foundations in order: casting on, the knit stitch, the purl stitch, binding off and reading a pattern.
  • Stitch and technique guides for garter stitch, stockinette, ribbing and seed stitch, plus gauge, tension, increases, decreases and weaving in ends.
  • Easy patterns and first projects such as a garter stitch scarf, a cotton dishcloth, a ribbed headband and a simple cowl.
  • Help with mistakes: picking up a dropped stitch, undoing rows safely and recognizing the problems almost every beginner runs into.

If you are new, the best place to begin is How to Start Knitting, followed by how to cast on and the knit stitch. The full list of guides is on the Tutorials page.

How the guides are written

Each tutorial explains one skill or one small project, describes every movement in full and points out the step where beginners most often go wrong. We use standard US knitting terms, explain each abbreviation the first time it appears, and give needle sizes in US numbers and millimeters and measurements in inches and centimeters.

The illustrations on this site are simplified drawings made to show how stitches, needles and yarn relate to each other. In the fabric drawings a knit stitch is shown as a V and a purl stitch as a bump. They are diagrams, not photographs of finished pieces.

The patterns published here are our own plain-language instructions for simple, generic shapes. We do not reproduce other designers’ patterns, and we do not publish invented reviews, ratings or testimonials. Yardage and time estimates are approximate and are worded that way.

Corrections and suggestions

If a step is unclear, a stitch count looks wrong or a link is broken, please tell us through the Contact page. Clear instructions matter more to us than anything else on the site, and corrections are always welcome.