Old-Fashioned Fruitcake
If there’s one thing I enjoy doing, it’s moving the furniture. Plotting future moves is almost as much fun.
Earlier this year I cooked up a delicious plan in which work desks (2) would be moved out of the living room into the kitchen, and the dining table would be moved into the living room, where it could enrich its life by doubling as a sewing table, writing table, games table, etc, etc, without being surrounded by cold air (the kitchen faces south-east) and the smells of cookery.
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Or, as it is known in knitting parlance, decreasing.
There are several different decreases available to the knitter, and each one gives us a different idea for how to downsize and declutter.
K2tog (knit two together)
A simple decrease: if you have two the same, get rid of one. Or as John the Baptist put it, whoever has two coats should give one to someone who has none (Luke 3:11). Martin of Tours went one better and divided by two despite starting with only one.
This decrease also works if you have two things that, while different, can serve the same function. Chuck out your garlic crusher; keep a knife.
P2tog (purl two together)
This decrease works very much like the K2tog; except that you approach the stuff from a different angle. Change your perspective (whether physically or mentally) and see what looks unnecessary from there.
K3tog (or P3tog)
This decrease is also on the same principle as the K2tog, except you start with triplicates instead of duplicates. It can also be extended to quadruplicates or quintuplicates if you really have far too many of something.
Sl1, K1, psso (slip one, knit one, pass slipped stitch over)
This is a good decrease for those who enjoy rearranging their furniture: move things around and you will see your excess more clearly.
Why do I need more x than will fit in that shelf? Why have I kept that pile of y all these years? If I got rid of the z, then I could have my abc here to hand…
Sl1, K2tog, psso (slip one, knit two together, pass slipped stitch over)
This is a decrease that looks very complex and impressive, but is really just a combination of two of the preceding methods. Take it step by step and you will find you have made twice the reduction.
P2tog tbl (purl two together through back loops)
This is the decrease that looks impossible at first glance. I mean, how could I… I’d have to…. No, I don’t think I can. But give it a go (watch your tension), don’t give up, and you’ll be surprised at what you actually can do.
Drop stitch
This is an extreme form of decrease, to be sure. It will leave a hole, and may have spreading consequences… 
…and yet for all that, it may produce a more beautiful result. Always providing, of course, that it is done intentionally.
What decreases do you use? Have I missed some? Please share in the comments!
I love rearranging furniture. I moved frequently in my childhood and youth, and even then I still found myself rearranging my room, or swapping rooms in order to effect a change. And I’m sure it’s not just me. No, rearranging the furniture is a deeply ingrained human activity, at least in those societies which use furniture.
When we moved in to this house, some eight months ago (I have just about recovered from the tea trauma, thank you), we carefully figured out what appeared to be the perfect living-room furniture arrangement – nay, more than that, the only workable arrangement. There were so many variables to take into account – electricity, heating, lines of sight, lines of movement, space for storage access etc etc.
I resigned myself to never moving the furniture again – in that room, at least, which is where the largest part of our furniture resides. But as time went on, I grew increasingly frustrated with the blinding sunlight bouncing off my desk, and decided that changes could and would be made.
The prospect of moving the furniture is very invigorating – to me at least. On the other hand, the execution can also prove tiring, which is why I made a scale map of the room and its furniture and decided on the layout by proxy first. (Because a little slip of paper weighs considerably less than a large desk, a shelf full of books, or a steel-based armchair.)
There was another constraint to bear in mind, however: I don’t like sitting with my back to the door. I can do it if I have to, but I tend to stay wary, which doesn’t work particularly well for getting into ‘flow’. Side on is fine, even three-quarters I can deal with, but having my back straight on to the entrance makes me uneasy. This may seem silly to you, but tell it to Wild Bill Hickok.
I went through many many frustrating iterations before deciding – rather selfishly – that since the main reason for the rearrangement was to have my desk in a better location, I should decide that first and work everything else around it. Given the size of the desk, it would have to be facing a wall, or it would ‘eat’ too much of the room.
Wall #1 has a fireplace in it – no go. Wall #2 is where the desk was to begin with, and while I could slide it along so it wasn’t entirely under the window, the sun problem would still be in play for at least part of the day – the part when I do most of my writing. Wall #3 is directly between the front door and the door to the rest of the house – good for keeping an eye on things but who gets anything done in a corridor? Wall #4 it would have to be, but there was a problem: Wall #4 faces the front door, so anyone facing the wall would have their back to the door. Twitch, twitch.
I tried to re-deal the paper slips to come out as anything but a dead man’s hand. It wasn’t working. Eventually I left the graph paper and tried out some reality. I went around the room, scrunching down to chair height and staring glassily at the walls. The Caped Gooseberry either didn’t notice or tactfully decided to say nothing.
At last, I found a spot I felt comfortable, half-way down Wall #4, where the front door was not right behind me, and the sun would not interfere. Bonus: it was near a source of electricity.
Once that was in place, the rest of the room wasn’t too hard to arrange. I even managed to place the Caped Gooseberry’s desk between me and the ‘corridor’ – thus giving my subconscious another reason to relax.
After that, of course, there was nothing to do but spend the next three hours or so shoving furniture around. (I like shoving around things that are bigger than me.) Happily the two heaviest bookshelves and the steel-based armchair didn’t need to move for this new plan.
I admit that it would have been more sensible to wait a day or two to begin, rather than start moving things around an hour before bedtime, but when I get the furniture-moving bit between my teeth there is no stopping me. As Nicole Holofcener said, “If a woman gets insomnia, you never know where you’re going to find her furniture the next morning. It’s primal.” I would add that while insomnia can be a cause of furniture moving, it can work the other way, too. Too busy moving furniture: sleep will have to wait.
Well worth the loss of sleep, too. The new arrangement is much easier to get around in and a much more relaxing space to be in. I can sit at my desk without being blinded by the sun, and my notes don’t fade so fast if I leave them out. So why, I found myself asking, didn’t we find this layout the first time? Probably because of the one defect this plan has: in order to watch something off the computer on the TV, you now have to run a cord from one corner of the room to the opposite corner. First world problems. Doesn’t bother me.
As another added bonus, I am now feeling the urge to purge rising again. Opening up the space has made it all too clear just how much stuff there is in this room (and let us be frank, this isn’t the only room). Bring on the katharsis!