Learn Basic Decreases to Shape Your Knitting

There comes a time when every knitter needs to learn how to shape their knitting. You can only make so many straight projects! Whether you’re looking to shape the top of a hat or the armholes and sleeves of a sweater, you’ll go far learning just two decreases: knit 2 together and slip, slip, knit, known in knitting language as k2tog and ssk.

The k2tog is usually considered the most basic, and it is really easy to do; just pretend two stitches are one and knit them together. This makes a right-slanting decrease and is fine for most applications. It’s not super prominent, and it’s usually what most of us default to when a pattern just says “decrease.”

SSK is a little more involved, but it’s not at all difficult. Slip two stitches as if to knit, then take the left-hand needle through the stitches from the front and knit them together. This makes a left-slanting decrease that is more prominent than a k2tog, but they are often paired for decorative effect in projects.

Here’s a quick video to show you the basics of both:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IvnVKK8UBA]

Do you have a preferred decrease? I’d love to hear about it.

Fall will be here before we know it, and that means there are holidays coming right behind where we might be entertaining at home. It’s always fun to have a hand knit touch in your home for other people to see, and if you’re going to be in the kitchen all day you might as well have some nice knit dish cloths to use.

I love this little plaid hand towel from Darling Jadore. Use a little bit of leftover cotton yarn from another project for the plaid portion. It looks like the horizontal stripes are worked as you knit and the vertical stripes are done with duplicate stitch, making this a quick and easy project even newer knitters can make.

Combine garter stitch and an easy eyelet pattern worked sideways to make the Annette Dish Towel from Cluck Cluck Boots, which is meant to be reminiscent of flour sack towels. It calls for DK weight yarn and you can work it in one color or two (or even three!).

Add a little more texture with this set of kitchen towels from Whileberry Creative. They’re mostly worked in garter stitch with borders in easy knit/purl patterns, and you can work them in sport or worsted weight yarn.

Two of Wands Shop has another cute allover knit and purl pattern they call the Seersucker Textured Tea Towel. It’s an easy repeating pattern worked in worsted weight yarn, and there’s a chart in the pattern you can use, but don’t have to, if you want to practice knitting from a chart.

The Classic Cloth dish towel from Handmade Home by Connie is another one that can use a little leftover yarn in a contrasting color, or you could color block it our use stripes throughout the pattern. This one uses worsted weight yarn and another easy repeating knit purl stitch pattern.

If you like to hang your towel on the oven handle or elsewhere but it’s always falling off, try the Stay Put kitchen towel from Fancy Step Knits. This project is worked in garter stitch and includes a hole partway through so you can pull the towel through itself over a rod or handle. Stripes are optional but a nice addition.

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