On this website, I’ve already posted a lot of tutorials about different types of decreases. Well, I encountered a stitch pattern that uses various triple decreases. In other words: Decreases in which 4 stitches are reduced to a single remaining stitch. In this tutorial, I will show you the “k4tog” right-leaning triple decrease. The abbreviation stands for “knit 4 stitches together”. It’s a common way to reduce the number of stitches in your project and make it narrower. Together with its matching left-leaning decreases, it can be found in lace patterning.
Below you can find how to work this decrease, so get your materials and follow along!
Materials
Yarn: Paintbox Yarns Simply DK, a good value, good quality 100% acrylic yarn, here in the color Tea Rose.
Knitting needles: This is a pair of straights that I picked up at the second-hand store when I started knitting, brand unknown.
Working a k4tog step by step
- First, work your way across the row until you’ve reached the point where you want to make the decrease. In this case, I want to work the triple decrease 5 stitches in after the garter stitch edge.
- Next, insert the tip of the right-hand needle into the first 4 stitches at the same time as if to knit. This is easier when using very sharp needles. I also find it helps to pull the fabric below the 4 stitches down a bit, as pictured here, to open up the loops that are on the needle.
- In this step, I’ve inserted the right-hand needle into the 4 stitches.
- Wrap the yarn around the needle…
- …and pull it through the stitches you inserted the right-hand needle in.
- To finish the k4tog decrease, slip the original stitches off the left-hand needle.
The below picture shows how it looks after 1 more decrease row has been worked. The second decrease was started 2 stitches in from the garter stitch edge. As you can see, another one wasn’t possible without dipping into the edge stitches if I wanted to stay in the decrease line you see forming. And that’s all there is to it!
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