Now it's a fun, creative hobby for anyone. For many people one of the most enjoyable aspects of the craft is browsing through the many yarns available in a knitting shop.
If the former, the stitch is denoted as a knit stitch; if the latter, as a purl stitch. For medium or intermediate levels you can have patterns like stocking caps, sweaters and knitted scarves; usually patterns with altered stitches and patterns for advanced levels, you can have patterns which are complicated and which require lot of shaping. It is a very simple stitch and usually worked over a multiple of four stitches with two extra.
Many knitters first become interested in the craft so that they can create blankets for their friends and family. Another problem is that too much knitting may lead to hand and wrist troubles; for this, special stress-relieving gloves are available. This is used to great effect in lace knitting, which consists of making patterns and pictures using such holes, rather than with the stitches themselves.
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). The single yarns may be dyed separately before plying, or afterwards to give the yarn a uniform look.
Get knitting! All it consists of is knitting one row, then purling the next, and so on, and so on.