A Knitter’s Blog

I have to admit that I would rather work an SSK decrease rather than a k2tog. The movement in the SSK seems to be so much more fluid to me than a k2tog.

However, because of the nature of each stitch, one can’t just replace k2tog with SSK. K2tog is a decrease that slants to the right and ssk slants to the left. When working fabric-shaping decreases, one must go with the correct diagonal.

SSK is the decrease that seems to have replaced PSSO (slip one, knit, pass the slipped stitch over the knit stitch). If I remember correctly, PSSO was the only left slanting decrease choice of my youth.

To implement and SSK, slip the first stitch on the left needle as if to knit, then slip the next stitch on the left needle as if to knit. There are now two unworked stitches on the right needle. Insert the left needle tip into the front of these two stitches and knit them.

For the last few weeks, I have been knitting mittens of all sizes while I was developing Mitten Wizard. By the time I was finishing the tweaks on the wizard, I had several newly knitted mittens scattered across my desk.

The last thing on my to-do list was to scan one of the mittens to use in yesterday’s post.  As I was trying too decide which mitten to use, I realized that my eye kept going back to the pulled top mitten in which I used SSK rather than K2tog for the decreases to close the mitten.

I was really surprised by two things. The first was that I really liked the rounded top of the mitten created by pulling. To pull a top, thread a tapestry needle with the tail of the yarn and pass the tapestry needle through the stitches on the needle and pull to close.

I usually knit mitten tops much like a sock toe, using the paired decrease method and then grafting. This method creates more of a squared top and Kitchener Stitch. 

And, to my surprise, I realized that I had used an SSK for each decrease line. I am not sure why I did this while I was knitting this particular knitting, but I did. The decrease lines were so even, that I went back to Mitten Wizard and changed the decreases in the pulled top mitten to SSK’s.

I have had it with code for the week. Today, the day of the Mitten Wizard introduction, I am going to spend my time knitting a pair of cashmere mittens with the pulled top. In some cases, simplicity is the definition of luxury.

Filed under: Knitting, Techniques, Tools by cwulster