How To’s Day: K2tog, YO & SSK, YO at Loomy Daze!

Stephanie has put together a clever short and sweet little video on how to do some fancy loom work!

She has it up at her site Loomy Daze. You can see it here:

Click here.

Go ahead and watch it.. I’ll wait, I want to expand on her video just a bit as to when you would want to use those methods from a design point of view, a little added value if you will..

First off what are these abbreviations?

k2tog=knit two together

YO= yarn over

SSK= slip slip knit

When you would want to use a k2tog, YO.

This method is used mainly in lace when you want to make a ‘hole’ in your knitting on purpose. The k2tog, decreases normally but when you add the YO  after it, you come out with the same number of stitches that you started with. So the width of your piece is kept even. So you could do eyelets like this:

The other point of a k2tog, is that it makes a right leaning decrease. As you see in Stephanie’s video the stitch you are moving to do this decrease will move from the left to the right, so it will lean to the right. This is not as important when doing lace, but comes into play when you are shaping garments.

Say you are making a sleeve cap, you will want the decreasing stitched on the sides of the sleeve cap to lean in toward the middle. this generally gives a neater cleaner look to the garment. so you will use a k2tog on the left edge of the sleeve when decreasing so it will lean in to the right which is toward the center!

The SSK, is the k2tog mirror image. As you see in the video you move the stitch on the right one peg to the left to accomplish this decrease. If you were working on that sleeve cap again, you would put this style of decrease on the right edge of the sleeve, so that the stitches on that edge are leaning to the left, again toward the center of your piece!

These methods are universal, you can apply this to the knitting board, and the needles! I hope this gives you a little food for thought as you work on your next looming project!

Again! Stephanie put together an excellent video, it is a great resource! There are some days I feel like I am in a DAZE.. ok let’s face it that is every day! I sure wish I had the time to do these types of video tutorials.. someday! But for now I will be content to refer you to the talent that is out there!