Creative Decreasing Basics

Find out how to make decreases with either a left or right slant.

What would you say if I ask you to decrease your knitting? I'm Vickie Howell from DIY’s Knitty Gritty, and don’t you worry, I'm not asking you to knit less. I'm just asking you to incorporate decreases in your knitting. There are two kinds I’ll show you today, but first I want you to see what it looks like in a piece. If you take a look at this wee little hat. You notice how nicely it curves to the top. This was all created by decreasing. I'm going to show you a left slanting and a right slanting decrease today. On both the knit side and the purl side. What you need to do for a left slanting decrease is a slip-slip knit. Now on a pattern this is going to look like S-S-K. So as the name implies, you're going to slip the first stitch, slip the second stitch and then knit those two together. Okay, we're going to want to do a right slanting decrease. Now this is really important if you're working on a piece that you want to be symmetrical that you use the opposite slanting decrease on each side. So now we're down to our last two stitches, we want a right slanting decrease. This one is so easy, it’s called a knit two together or K2 tug pattern. Knit them together, turning two stitches into one. Alright, let's see how we do it on the purl side. It’s exactly the same formula, only we're of course purling instead of knitting. So for our left slanting decrease, slip one, slip two and then we're going to purl it through the back loop. Now this is called the slip-slip-purl or S-S-P in a pattern. And now we're going to go to our last two stitches and we are going to purl two together or P2 tug. Take both stitches, purl them together, turning two stitches into one. As you can see, you got a nice triangular shape forming, that’s all there is to it. Just keep practicing and in no time, I guarantee you, you’ll see your knitting slimming down.