Stupid Question/Observation of the Day

#1

I was working on a slouch cap for one of the kids earlier and part of the decreases was an ssk. I know what ssk means, but I’d never put it into practice so I came on over to see the demo video and my first thought was, “what a waste of effort, it’s just K2tog.” Then I realized, that for continental knitters, you’re actually untwisting the loop and then knitting the two loops together. So I just K2tog in my usual combined way, it turned out well.

Am I off-base here? Is that the whole reason behind slipping the stitches or is there something else I’m totally not seeing?

#2

For combined knitters you reverse the decreases, k2tog leans left and ssk will lean right. You’re correct that slipping the 2 sts for those of us who knit english or continental realigns the sts. It’s like a slip 1 k1, psso for us, just done differently.

And it’s not a stupid question at all - that was very astute of you…

#3

You’re right about SSK in English/Continental being just a k2tog in Combined knitting. The whys and wherefores require more thinking than I care to give. :lol:

#4

It’s nice to know I was right about something today. I’m going to stick a pin in this and bask in the glory.

#5

Whenever I come across SSK, I use a K2tog thru the back loop and it slants the proper direction. It is just easier in my mind.

#6

Doesn’t the SSK actually twist the stitches and give them a slightly different look than just a k2tog tbl?

#7

It probably does for Continental or English knitting, however, in combined I’m always knitting through the back loop anyway so moving the stitches to my right needles is sort of pointless. That was the big clue to me while I was watching Amy’s video.

I’m trying to be more observant of how I knit and how the stitches slant, etc. as I plan to begin more challenging patterns. I have a chart of Combined Knitting conversions for things like increases, decreases, etc. that I keep up on a monitor screen or my Kindle while I am knitting. I never paid attention to things like that before, which explains why I didn’t like many of my projects in the past. It also helps when I am looking at a sweater that someone is wearing and trying to figure out how they did it.

#8

When knitting regular english or continenatal and you k2togtbl the actual dec has twisted sts. If you slip them first, they get reoriented on the needle and you end up without a twist. For combined knitting, those knitters can just do a regular k2tog and it works out to a left slanting dec without twisted sts.