Circular Knitting: Basic Decreases

Video Transcript

"So, when you've reached the desired length to the crown, for our case it's about four to five inches, you're going to have to do decreases to bring it up smaller for the top of the head. So, first I'm just going to show you a basic decrease, and then I'll show you how you would work them into the hat pattern. So, for a basic decrease, instead of knitting one stitch like that, you're going to put your needle into two stitches, and knit them together. And, that brings two stitches down to one stitch. So, again, you're still going from front to back. I'm pulling this down a little bit to make it easier to get into the stitch, and you're going to go into those two stitches, bring it together, and see how that decreases from two to one stitch. So, I'm just going to put those back on the needle, kind of unknitting. So, for a hat, if you have a multiple of ten, you can put a marker very ten stitches as kind of a helpful guide in your decreasing. So, that's what we're going to do. I'm going to put a marker in every ten stitches. Alright? We'll just think of them as been done. And then, what you're going to do, is you're going to knit two. Each marker, two stitches before the marker. So, you'll knit along, and then, when you get to two stitches before the marker, so you've to unknit stitches, and then your marker, you're going to knit those two together. Okay? And then you're going to pass your marker from one stitch to the other, you don't knit the marker. It's just like a bookmark. So, then you would knit to the next marker, and you would do the same thing, and you'll keep on in this manner. The pattern will tell you how often to do these decreases, row by row. Sometimes, you skip a few rows, and then you pass your marker and you'll keep going along this way, and then you'll have your stitches, because you're using this marker as a guide, your decreases will come along in a very pretty angle, all kind of lining up diagonally."