Knitting - Increasing and decreasing stitches

Hey everyone ;-) This is a quick post on decreasing and increasing stitches in knitting.

First for increasing stitches you knit the stitch as normal leaving the original stitch on your left needle and then knit a stitch into the back of that stitch. This then creates two stitches from one stitch.

Then for decreasing stitches you go into the bottom of two stitches and knit a stitch as normal. This then takes two stitches down to one stitch. Below is a YouTube video of both techniques:

Increase and decrease stitches

Below are my own samples of this technique:

My increase and decrease sample

My increase and decrease sample 2

This sample that I have done started with four stitches and went up to fourteen and then down to four again. It is really simple when you know how to do it and it is a good way to form shapes if you wish to make a jumper etc. Thanks for reading x