tutorial – working the bunny ears decrease

Tutorial on working the bunny ears decrease

In this tutorial, I’m going to show you a very neat decrease: the bunny ears decrease. It’s a symmetrical way of decreasing 3 stitches to only 2! It’s called this way, because the result somewhat looks like 2 bunny ears “hugging” the resulting 2 stitches. Now, in this version of the decrease, the “ears” are pointing outwards. There is also a version in which the ears point inwards, that one is called the “bunny ears back” decrease. I’ll make a tutorial on that version of the decrease soon.

Materials used

Yarn: Paintbox Yarns Simply DK, a good value, good quality 100% acrylic yarn, here in the color Marine.

Needles: This is a pair of straights that I picked up at the second-hand store when I started knitting, brand unknown.

Working the bunny ears decrease step by step

In patterns, you may encounter the following description of this stitch:
Bunny ears decrease (bedec): Knit 2 stitches together but leave the second stitch on the left needle, next work skp over the next 2 stitches.
But how to actually do this? Read on!

  1. First, work your way across the row until you’ve reached the point where you want to make the decrease.

    See those 3 stitches on the left-hand needle? That’s where I’ll be making the bunny ears decrease.Step 1 of working a bunny ears decrease

  2. Next, insert the tip of the right-hand needle into the first 2 stitches at the same time as if to knit.

    Over these stitches, we’ll be doing the first steps of a k2tog.Step 2

  3. Wrap the yarn around the needle…

    Step 3

  4. … and pull the yarn through the 2 stitches.

    Step 4

  5. Next, slide only 1 of the 2 original stitches of the left-hand needle.

    With a regular k2tog, both stitches would be moved off the needle. So this is where it starts to go different.Step 5

  6. Now we’re starting the left leaning decrease part of the stitch.

    The main point here is to work this on the 2 remaining stitches on the left-hand needle: 1 stitch we haven’t handled yet, and 1 stitch that we didn’t move off the needle when working the k2tog right-leaning decrease. This part of the stitch can be worked as ssk, skp, or any other way you may prefer to work a left-leaning decrease. Since I personally prefer skp I’ll be showing this in the tutorial.

    To start, insert the tip of the right-hand needle into the first stitch as if to knit, and slip it onto the right-hand needle without actually knitting it. This is how it now looks:Step 6 - the second part of working a bunny ears decrease

  7. Next, we knit the second stitch.

    To do so, we start with inserting the right-hand needle into the first stitch on the other needle, wrap the yarn around the needle, pull it through the stitch you inserted the right-hand needle in, and slip the original stitch off the left-hand needle.Step 7

  8. Next, insert the left-hand needle into the second stitch counted from the tip of the right-hand needle…

    Step 8

  9. … and pull it over the first stitch from the tip of the right-hand needle to complete the decrease.

    Do you see how this part of the decrease slants to the left? With this, the bunny ears decrease is finished.The result: a binny ears decrease!

And that’s all there is to it!

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