newbie question on stitch counting and row counting

[mommyto2presidents]

Okay, this may seem silly, but how do you count the number of stitches on your needle? I'm doing the double cast on and I'm supposed to be casting on 35 stitches. Now, looking at the needle after the first cast-on stitch, there is the one *knot* under the needle and two pieces of yarn on top of the needle. I only performed one action, but is that giving me one stitch (counting the knot) or two stitches (counting the yarn on top of the needle)? Can someone explain that to me?

Also, how do I properly count knitted rows? I get confused by what I am looking at a lot of the times.

Sorry if these are very basic questions, but I don't want to start out by guessing what the right answer is, know what I mean??

Thanks for all of your help!!

[Jan in CA]

Okay first of all...your username is cute! I take you have two kids who want to be president?

The first stitch you cast on does make two stitches. Count them both. And no, it's not a dumb question! We all had to learn sometime!

[Yarnlady]

If you're doing garter stitch (knitting every row) each ridge is two rows.
If you're doing stockinette stitch (knit one row, purl one row, repeat) each V shape is a stitch, so just count the column of Vs to see how many rows you've knitted. A look at Basic Stitch Patterns here
http://www.knittinghelp.com/knitting/basic_techniques/misc.php
may help you out.

[suzeeq]

The loop from the knot makes the first stitch, so when you cast on the `first' st, it's actually the second one.