Finger knitting is a fabulous and easy craft for kids of all ages (from around the ages of 5 and up, but younger kids may be capable also). It’s a simple stitch, requires no experience or expertise, no equipment other than yarn and scissors and it is much, much quicker and easier than traditional knitting. It’s similar to french knitting with a similar result, but quicker and easier than that too.
You might also like our finger knit snakes
If you’ve never finger knitted before fear not. I had never finger knitted before either until my youngest daughter (who was 6 at the time) showed me how. She had picked it up by watching some older girls at school finger knitting, and then came home and knitted a length that could literally wrap around our whole lounge room twice!
In this post my girls are showing you how they finger knit, with simple step-by-step pictures. Some of the future projects we have planned have finger knitting as one of the steps so I thought it would be useful to have a single post with the basic stitch explained.
You can do finger knitting with just one finger, two, three or four depending on how thick you want your ‘rope’ to be. Today we are explaining two-finger knitting because that’s what my eight year old felt like making at the time.
You Will Need
• Yarn – any thickness will do but I personally love using the bulky kinds (8ply and up)
• Scissors
• Your fingers
How To:
- Clamp the end of the yarn between your thumb and the palm of your hand. If you are right handed clamp it in your left hand, and if you are left handed do the opposite.
- Create a figure eight with the yarn around your first two fingers.
- Create a second figure eight directly above it.
- Leaving the second loop in place, lift the bottom loop over the top of it and slip it off the end of your finger, repeat with the second finger.
- You can now let go of the end which has been clamped between your thumb and the palm of you hand. Give it a gentle tug.
- Repeat the stitch by making another figure eight, lifting the bottom loops over the top loops and slipping them off your fingers.
- Continue knitting using this technique.
- When you are happy with the length, slip both of the loops off the ends of your fingers and hold them in one hand.
- Snip the yarn with your scissors and thread the end of it back through both loops, gently tugging the end of your rope.
- You’re all done!
Finger knit using one, three or four fingers by extending the figure eight to include the next two fingers, or reducing it to include only one.
Here is my younger daughter finger knitting with four fingers:
You can see how super simple it is. If you have knitted a length and wish to come back and continue it later a simple trick is to slip the ends over felt tip pens in place of your fingers. Connector pens work brilliantly for this purpose because they snap together and your knitting won’t slip off the ends.
Now go on, try it yourself.
More fun craft ideas using yarn:
• Traditional yarn dolls are a simple and inexpensive DIY toy
• Make a woven butterfly using craft sticks and yarn
• Make your own DIY pom pom maker using a scrap of cardboard
Psst Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter so you don’t miss our exciting future projects.
Pin it:
Fabulous instructions…thanks girls (& Mom!)
What do you do with the chains of knitting? Can you join them together? If so how??
We haven’t gotten that far, but I’m sure you could use a needle and thread to sew them together
you can finger knit them together with string. it is pretty easy. (javen jordet, 12 years old, anchorage, alaska).
That sounds pretty cool. Great to hear from you Javen
Have you ever figured out how to make the chain into a blanket? I learned how to do this about 40 years ago, but only how to make a chain and I would LOVE to make a blanket!!
I haven’t figured that one out either yet, sorry!
This is fun and easy. I will teach my daughter how to do this. Now all of stuffed animals and dolls will have scarves for winter and just plain fashion.
Thanks for sharing.
Holly
No problem! Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment 🙂
Do you know how to finger crochet?
If so can you post something about how to do it?
I love your work you should message me about anything. Just do it on pintrest @ Kenzee Norwood
Sorry I meant Mackenzee Autumn❤❤❤❤
Hi Mackenzee, I’ve never finger crocheted before, but it sounds fun!
it looks awesome and easy to do. Thanks a lot!!
It’s SO easy. Have fun!
How do you add another row?
You can’t with your fingers (or if you can I don’t know how). If you want to you can sew two rows together, but the finger knitting in general is just a super simple project that’s great for kids. Similar to french knitting.
My extended day kids (school-age) have been finger knitting! We are collecting them to weave them into a rug using a hula hoop and cut pieces of a shirts! We followed another DIY for that, but your instructions here are perfect for my kids with no experience finger knitting! Thank you!
Awesome! So glad you found our instructions helpful. The hula hoop weaving sounds like a great project idea too.
My mom told me that I needed to learn how to knit, but we didn’t have any knitting needles. I found your website and am obsessed with finger knitting.
I don’t know how to knit with needles either but this is so fun and easy! Thanks for reading.
I will definitely try this!
Its so easy and fun – you definitely should try it 🙂
I luv this particular knitting style very muchh. I want to learn this. Thanku alot for teaching the process in a simple way. I will definitely try this out and wear self-made warmer 😍😍
I’m glad you like it 🙂
While holding the knot in the middle with the thumb and middle finger of the right hand, pull the left hand on the left end of the thread. So the loop closes. The first knot of her cord is finished. – Yes ?
Yes, make sure the loop is closed and tie a knot
Thanks so much for these simple instructions. We have lots of wool and I’ve been wanting to find a simple craft for my 6 year old daughter. She sat down and made a chain for half an hour with ease! Brilliant to find, we are in week 4 of lockdown in our country and this has been a great wee craft!
That’s lovely to hear. Thanks for using our tutorial, I’m glad you found it helpful 🙂
I followed these instructions to teach it to my daughter and she made me a really long chain. It was VERY loose so, I knitted her chain again and came up with a really thick chain that I sewed together to make a hat! She LOVES it and is SO proud! Thanks for the great instructions!!! I may have my Scouts try to make these too!
The hat sounds amazing! I’m glad she had fun 🙂
Your instructions are so clear. Thank you! I’m going to use this technique with kids at my library. They will love it!
My 7 year old picked this up really fast (after we struggled and failed with regular knitting a bit). This was just her speed! Thank you for your videos, it really helped us understand what to do. She has made necklaces for her dolls and bracelets for her friends. When she’s bored of that, I’ll try to expand her knitting to 4 fingers.