SSK Knitting Stitches

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Jeanette White on behalf of Expert Village and Piper's Quilts and Comforts and Yarns. Today we're going to be doing decreases. There's a lot of different kinds of decreases and a lot of it has to do with the slant. Why that's important is on a sweater, you would want the decreases to lean toward the inside of the garment and not toward the outside. So there's a slant to a decrease. You're going to accomplish that in a lot of different ways, but today I'm going to show you two really easy ways and we will be doing, of course, continental knitting. So it's best if you do your decreases one or two stitches in from your salvage stitches, so that you'll have a clear channel to assemble this when it's done. So here we go. The first one is going to be what's known as an SSK, which stands for slip slip knit. So I'm knitting my two stitches, now I'm going to slip, slip, and I'm going to put those back onto my left hand needle, and then I'm going to insert the needle through both stitches at the back and knit them together. And what that has done is slanted this and you can see here, toward the inside. I've got a clear channel here for assembling this garment when it's done. Right here you'll not be interrupted by the decreases. This is an easy thing to do and will make your garment look handmade as opposed to homemade. And that's how you do an SSK."