KNITmuch | Issue 07

Let’s talk about the decreases. I’ve put 4 in the
pattern: k2tog, p2tog, ssk, and ssp. Most beginner
knitters will be familiar with the k2tog and p2tog,
and likely ssk, but ssp? “What’s that,” you say?
With both ssk and ssp, you slip stitches knitwise, one at
a time, from the left needle to the right one.
With ssk, you slip the stitches back onto the tip of
the left needle so the right needle crosses behind
the left one, then you wrap the yarn and draw
the loop through, essentially knitting the stitches
through the back of the loop.
For ssp, when you slip the stitches back onto the tip
of the left needle, you take the right needle tip out,
then re-insert it into those two slipped stitches from
behind, almost pointing the right needle tip directly
at yourself. Then, you wrap the yarn around the
needle tip at the front of the work and draw the loop
through to the back. Ssk is illustrated in the photo on
the left, and ssp in the photo on the right.
This is a very fine point of detail, especially for a
toddler’s jumper. This is a good time to note that
patterns really are guidelines, and that there are
no “knitting police”. When your toddler is moving
around at the speed toddlers do, nobody is going
to say “Oh, she should have done those as ssp
instead of p2tog!” But, if I was sizing this pattern up
for an adult size, I would want this amount of detail
in my garment.
OK, home stretch – just 3 more things to cover:
First, asterisks – inevitably, when working up a
pattern for knitting, the reader is going to come
across the humble asterisk (*). It may be the most
helpful symbol used in knitting. Its primary use is to
indicate that a series of instructions that follow will
be repeated at least once in the row. Sometimes,
asterisks also denote that a number of rows will be
repeated. Often in such cases, two or more asterisks
are used.
On our decrease round, when you follow this
direction “*Slm, k2tog, k to 2 sts before marker, ssk;
rep from *” you will reach the end of the round
when you reach the semi colon the second time. The
semi colon is also an important signal to the pattern
reader – it usually signals the end of the repeat.
An example of a series of repeating rows appears
after the first color stripe. After joining in Col C, two
asterisks (**) indicate the beginning of the next color
stripe. The two asterisks before “Join Col D” signify
the end of that repeat – think of them as “starry
little brackets.”
But, what’s with that vague instruction “Knit in
stockinette stitch (K every round) working a
decrease round on 6th and every following 6th (6th,
7th) round:”? This is just an efficient way of writing
the pattern. I could have written it like this:
Rounds 1-5: K around.
Round 6 (Dec round):
but that would have given me a problem with the
larger size, where decreases occur on the 7th round
instead of the 6th, as with the other 2 sizes. The
instruction as I have written it in the pattern, above,
is the way most other designers will write it, and it
brings me to this important point: read all the way
through a pattern before you begin. If you stopped
reading at “Knit in stockinette stitch every round,”
and knitted merrily on, your tunic would have no
shape at all above the stripes, and you would have
more than 20 too many stitches when you got to
the bodice!
Two photographs showing the difference of execution between an ssk and ssp.
On the top, I’m about to knit the ssk, and below, the ssp. Ssp is a bit of a tricky
maneuver, and if it’s causing you problems, substitute it out for p2tog. Nobody’s
going to notice the difference when that toddler goes speeding by! Note that
my yarn should have been at the front of the work in the lower picture.
30 KNITmuch | issue 7