How to Knit a Pearl Side Decrease

Video Transcript

"Hi, I’m Kelsey. I’ve been knitting for 10 years and am a member of several knitting organizations. If you’ve learned to knit and pearl, you can do stockinet stitching and make a square, but a lot of times you’re going to want to make something that’s a different shape than just a square or rectangle. To do that you’re going to need to add stitches or take them away. This is called increasing and decreasing. I’m going to show you now how to decrease on the pearl side, to decrease a pearl stitch. There are two really simple basic ways to do that. The first on is very self explanatory, its called pearl two together. Basically when you do that, you just pearl two stitches as if they were one. You go in like you normally do, from right to left, but you go through two stitches like that. Then, it’s exactly the same, you throw the yarn over, pull it through and slide those two stitches together off. You’ve now turned two stitches into one stitch. Another way to do it is called slip one, pearl on, pass the slip stitch over. Some abbreviate it as S1, P1, PSSO. It’s also pretty self explanatory. You get to the stitch that you want to decrease, and you’re going to slip a stitch, which means that you transfer the stitch from the left needle to the right needle without actually pearling it. You insert the right needle into the stitch on the left needle just as you would if you were going to pearl, then instead of wrapping the yarn around, you just pull it off the needle. Then, pearl one stitch as you normally would. Now you want to pull this slip stitch over that pearled stitch. You do that by inserting the needle into it like so, and then pulling it up and off the needle. Then tighten it there and you’ve tuned those two stitches into one stitch. That’s how you decrease on the pearl side. "