Day Two: Skill + 1UP
There was a project I had been working on within the last few months, and when I briefly looked over it (as I generally do with most patterns) before deciding to tackle it, I didn't see anything that I felt I couldn't "cope" with - then when I actually got down to knitting it, I was bewildered to see it actually called for a 'ssk' which is an abbreviation for 'slip, slip, knit' - help!
What really got me was that I have done plenty of lace knitting and things which involve increasing and/or decreasing but somehow had never actually come across this particular technique...and therefore didn't know how to do it. Minor panic ensued whilst I tried to use logic to work out just quite how exactly one is supposed to proceed.
Turns out it's not actually as obvious as it sounds, since the notation requires you to slip two stitches in a knitwise direction and then knit them together. Queue youtube to the rescue!
A great tutorial, simply explained and demonstrated, really makes all the difference when learing a new technique.
I'm also happy to report that I've started playing around with some cabling ideas in recent weeks and I'm pretty pleased with the results so far:
