French Knitting Tips and Tricks for Beginners

French knitting is easy and fun. Anyone can learn, all you need is yarn and a bobbin. It's a really mindful craft to do as an adult, but it's also a lovely thing to learn with a child and a great introduction to knitting. I used this tutorial here to start me off.

You can buy a bobbin here and we highly recommend buying a crochet hook to to help with hooking over your stitches. As with learning any new skill, your first few attempts might not be as good as you hoped. After giving it a go myself, I’ve compiled a list of things that helped keep my stitches neat. Read the tips and tricks to improve your french knitting from the start!

Hints & Tips

Even with a good tutorial your french knitting may be messy at first, but don't give up - embrace the process! Read these tips to speed up your progress...

• Use cotton or polyester yarn, not wool or acrylic as their fibres are more likely to get stuck or pulled. 
• This also applies to any fuzzy thread of any material, the added friction of the fuzzy fibres will make the yarn pull more. A tightly spun yarn or jersey is ideal.
• We recommend a crochet hook (around 2-4 mm depending on the size of your yarn and spool) to help you pull over your stitches.
• Although you are using a crochet hook to knit, a metal darning needle is easiest to thread the spool with. This is because it has a wide eye hole but the metal has a little extra weight which makes it easier to fall through the hole. 
• Try to keep your loops loose so that you don’t have to struggle wedging your crochet hook into the loops. 
• You can pull the yarn coming through the bottom of the hole to bring the knit tube downward through the hole instead of clogging up at the top. This also helps keep the tension, and therefore stitches, even.