Help with decreasing

[jess_izzle]

Hello all. =D I'm knitting a hat from a pattern I found here on lj. It's not too hard thus far but there's something in the instructions I just don't understand.

Crown Shaping:
Round 1: *k2tog, [k2tog, yo] 8 times*; repeat between *s around - 102 sts rem.What do the brackets mean? I get that I need to repeat that whole step on the needles between

Comments

[mamadeb]

You got it right the second time:

1) knit two together once
2) knit two together then yarn over

...and just repeat step two 8 times, before starting with step one again?

The brackets are a standard part of knitting patterns, and this was the correct way of using them - "consider these stitches a repeat inside the repeat."

[jess_izzle]

Awesome, thank you so much. =)

[moonpupy]

Okay, I'm lost. What's the difference between the first set and the second set? I flunked math a lot because of formulas. To me, they read the same.

[mamadeb]

It's a matter of grouping things together

[moonpupy]

Does this make sense?

No, not really. From what I remember about maths, you did what was in the bracket first, then worked outward in the formula.

So, does that mean you do the k2tog, yo and then do a k2tog on top of that? I'm seriously confused here.

[jess_izzle]

If I'm understanding it correctly it would be:

Knit two together.

Then knit two together, yarn over, knit two together, yarn over, knit two together, yarn over, knit two together, yarn over, knit two together, yarn over, knit two together, yarn over, knit two together, yarn over, knit two together, yarn over.

...then repeat that.

[moonpupy]

Ohhhhh, okay. Thank you!

[mamadeb]

This isn't quite maths. In maths, you work from the innermost brackets outward. This is knitting. You read the instructions in order.

Look again at the instructions - *k2tog[k2tog,yo]8 times* until end of round.

In words, it would be "For each repeat, knit two together once, and then knit two together-yarnover eight times. Do this until you reach the end of the round." Each repeat begins with a single k2tog, and ends with 8 k2tog-yo combinations.