Bob's absolutely correct - the more you DO (Yoda's mantra "There is no try.."), the more you're feel comfortable and the more you will find yourself feeling knowledgeable. Experience will be your best teacher.
We ALL learn in different ways - some people are visual, audio or kinetic (hands-on) learners. You will need to decide what works best for you.
I work in a web hosting company, and I'm surrounded by designers, coders and all-out geeks who just love the web. I've heard about how some people started with notepad (like me), and others who are purely designers working through Photoshop. One thing that I have noticed though, is that you should not forget about your FREE resources out there. Google webmaster tools, Chrome's option to inspect elements or Firefox's Firebug. Those two tools alone allow you find a page and dissect it - even experiment - you can make changes to the pages on the fly just to see what may happen.
Try using Chrome's Inspect Element option - go find your favorite website and then see what they're doing using the inspect tool. It's another way for you to learn about how things tick on the web.
Have fun!