Semantic Quibble, or Structural Difference: ssk & k2tog tbl

[lwood]

I recently finished the Rowan Birch pattern in Hand Maiden Sea Silk (Cornflower colorway), and it's just gorgeous. The pattern is not particularly complicated, but it had two terminology features that threw me

Comments

[alunissage]

I'm quite picky about my decreases too. I'm finally finishing up my lace wedding shawl (seven months after the wedding...) and while it's not a spectacularly innovative pattern, when I put it together I ended up with at least three kinds of double decreases and two of each single decrease. I used k2tog tbl for one side near the selvage, so on the other I slipped two stitches individually knitwise, returned them to the needle purlwise, and k2tog to get a similarly twisted decrease. I should mention, though, that this wasn't necessarily successful in terms of tension, though that may be more a product of the yarn (Tilli Tomas Pure and Simple) and the context -- knitting together a st and a yo right next to the selvage, which was then slipped on the WS -- the twisted st in the decrease tended to completely "lock" the slipped st so it was really work to pull at it if it was too small. Well, I won't be doing that on selvages again.

I don't like to psso, so almost every decrease I do involves a ssk-type motion of putting the left needle through the slipped stitches purlwise or returning st to the left needle and knitting together. Rather than k3tog, which doesn't seem "right" to me when it's the intersection of two lines of left and right-slanting decreases, I do, hm, ssk3tog, I suppose it'd be abbreviated: slip two stitches individually knitwise, slip them together back to the LH needle knitwise, k3tog. This puts the first stitch just under the third stitch rather than under the second stitch. Given how I don't like the tension of k2tog much, k3tog is far more work than this (since the slipping evens out the tension a little). I prefer this dec in Mermaid's Mesh, where the second stitch of the three is a yo and should be at the bottom. Similarly, I'd rather do the opposite double decrease as ss2k -- sl 1 kwise, sl 2 together kwise, knit all three by putting the LH needle through them purlwise as in a ssk.