Decrease with Confidence

We saw The Dark Knight movie today. I had decided that based on his performance in Brokeback Mountain, Heath Ledger would giv an Oscar worthy performance. I’m not sure if he did since his Joker was so scary I spent the majority of the time when he was on the screen hiding my face. I guess that’s good, when the villain is so scary you can’t even look at him. I did really like the special effects used for Two Face. And the bonus of it all, I knit 3” of the ribbing on the Rose Ribbing Sweater. I'm using the same Nostalgia Yarn I used for the Lutea Lace Tank Top (which is still waiting to have ends darned in).

I have to confess. I didn’t go to class last week due to root canal fun. This means that I didn’t get any work done on the Ivy League Vest. Well I told myself I would work on it during the week before the next class. I have not. I’ve been too busy working on the Waving Lace Socks. Speaking of which, I had an epiphany today. I’m going to share it with all of you good little knitters. But first another more serious confession.

In the past 4 ½ years I’ve been knitting, I’ve never known the difference between SSK & K2tog. It’s only in the last six months that I began to understand that they should be knit differently but I still had no idea about which was which and how they should lean and all that. If I pattern said “left leaning decrease” I would have to go through a period of trial and error each time until I found the right end result.
As you can imagine being SSK & K2tog dyslexic is a bit of a challenge when knitting waving lace. I’ve kept my handy note card with drawings of each on it at my side the entire time. But today was a different day. Today I decided that enough was enough and I wanted a mnemonic to help me remember which is which. I recruited The Boyfriend for help but turned out not to need it. Just looking at

K2tog SSK

made me realize that the K is the stitch that ends up on top!

K2tog, the K is on the left, and that stitch is on top, thus it’s a RIGHT leaning decrease.
SSK, the K is on the right, and that stitch is on top, thus it’s a LEFT leaning decrease.

Bloody Hell!!!! Why didn’t somebody tell me this sooner! I can know decrease with confidence!