Day 9: Knit Two Together

Welcome back to our Learn to Knit series here at the Knitting Circle. My name is Jen Lucas and in this video, I'd like to show you how to do a basic decrease, a knit two together. This particular decrease takes two stitches and turns it into one. And it's very easy to work. It's all in the name.

We're gonna knit two stitches together to take two stitches and turn it into a single stitch. I'm gonna show you how to do this using both the English method and the continental method, just like the other videos. And let's take a look at it. The knit two together is a basic decrease that you're gonna find in many different knitting projects. And here, I have a couple swatches that use the knit two together in two different ways.

So here is that eyelet swatch that we looked at in the yarn over video. And as I mentioned in that video to create these eyelet holes we did a yarn over, but then we did a knit two together. So we did the yarn over to increase and then the knit two together to decrease. So that way our stitch count would stay the same on our overall fabric. So the point here is that you can use a decrease, like a knit two together, in order to create lace patterns like this one here.

You might have a yarn over somewhere on your fabric and you might do a knit two together or some other decrease, even, somewhere else on your fabric to create that lace pattern. So the knit two together is the most basic decrease which is really great for this sort of beautiful eyelet pattern. And, again, we'll be exploring this stitch pattern more in our cowl that will be knitting. Another example of the knit two together is here where I have used it to decrease, in order to shape my fabric. So I had cast on down here and I bound off up here and then I just worked some knit two togethers on every right side row to sort of decrease my fabric in this nice line.

And what you'll notice here is that the knit two together decrease creates a right leaning decrease. So it leans to the right. And so of course, there's gonna be some decreases that lean to the left. There's decreases that sort of all fall on top of each other, go to the center. There's so many different types of decreases in knitting.

And of course we have a bunch of decrease videos here at the Knitting Circle for you to check out. But this is the most basic one. When you're learning to knit, you just need to know how to knit two together. Much like the yarn over, which is the increase we learned yesterday, the knit two together. It's just, as it sounds, we're going to knit two stitches together.

So I'll show you how to do that with the yarn in both my right and left hand. So we'll start with the right hand. So I'm just gonna go ahead and net a couple of stitches and then to knit two together, we're gonna do just that. We're gonna take the next two stitches on the needle here, and we're going to knit them together. So I'm going through both of these stitches together.

So I'm coming all the way over here to the left side of the second stitch. And then I'm gonna go into both of them together, like I'm knitting. So I've gone through both. I'm wrapping the yarn around, pulling the loop through, just like I'm knitting. And if we take a really close look here we've taken two stitches and now we have a single stitch.

And so we decreased. And so again, we're just going to knit two stitches together like this, just like that. And then if I'm putting the yarn into my left hand to knit continental, it's the same thing. I'll just knit a stitch here and now I'm gonna knit two stitches together. So we're still working it in the same way.

We're gonna come into both stitches. Like we're gonna knit them together, wrap the yarn around and pull it through. See, I had two stitches and now I have a single stitch. I've got two more stitches left. Let's do that again.

So you see here. Sometimes it's a little loose on the end there. We've got two stitches, gonna insert the needle into both like I'm knitting, and wrap the yarn around and pull it through to decrease. And that's all there is to the knit two together. It's a very, very simple decrease.

But now that you know how to do that, you can knit just about anything. There you go. Wasn't that easy? Now that we've learned a few more basic stitches, we're ready to get started on our cowl. So in our next lesson, I will be going over the supplies, as well as showing you how to cast on and work the setup for your cowl.

I'll see you then.