In Which the Pirate Decreases.

Last night I finished the gusset decreases on the first of the Cascade Heritage socks. It looks as if I’m getting nine stitches to the inch, which is slightly more than I’d expected from my first swatchattempt at knitting the cuff. I hope the socks are big enough for Michael, because they’re slightly too big for me. And I hope I don’t run out of yarn before I get to the toe. It’s going to be close.

When I picked up the gusset stitches, I picked up an extra two in each corner to eliminate the hole that so often forms there. But they were picked up into purl stitches, so I needed to figure out the purl equivalents for decreases. The opposite of K2tog is P2tog, but the opposite of SSK… is SSP, a complicated maneuver which begins in a similar way (slip two stitches knitwise, return them to the left needle) but then requires those two stitches to be purled together through the back loop. Fortunately there is only one of these stitches to be made per sock; I think I can deal with that.

Perhaps in a couple of years I’ll look back on this entry and laugh that I ever thought SSP was complicated.