sl — Slip (Abbreviation)

sl means "slip" — moving a stitch across to the right needle unworked, with no yarn wrapped and no new loop formed. On its own, a slipped stitch isn't a decrease or an increase; it's a neutral move used as a building block inside other techniques, or on its own for specific fabric effects like heel-flap patterns and mosaic colorwork.

Knitwise versus purlwise: why the direction matters

A slipped stitch can be moved knitwise (inserting the needle as if to knit, which twists the stitch slightly) or purlwise (inserting as if to purl, which leaves it untwisted). The two produce genuinely different results in the finished fabric, and patterns specify which is intended — "sl 1 kwise" or "sl 1 pwise" — precisely because the wrong choice changes the stitch's orientation and can throw off a decrease or pattern built on top of it.

Slipping as part of a decrease

Slipping is a component of several decreases rather than a decrease on its own — ssk slips two stitches knitwise before knitting them together; psso slips a stitch, works another, then passes the slipped one over. In these contexts, "sl" is one step of a larger sequence, not the whole instruction.

Slipping for fabric texture

Beyond decreases, slipped stitches create their own distinct textures — mosaic and slip-stitch colorwork use slipped stitches (worked with the yarn held either in front or behind, per wyif and wyib) to carry a color visually across a row without actually knitting it there, and heel flaps commonly use a slipped-stitch pattern specifically for the extra density and durability it adds.

Related abbreviations

• wyif / wyib — with yarn in front / in back, specifying where the working yarn sits while slipping
• psso — pass slipped stitch over, the step that follows many slip instructions

FAQ

Does slipping a stitch use any working yarn? No — a slip moves the stitch without wrapping any new yarn around it, which is exactly why a slipped stitch alone doesn't change your total stitch count.

If a pattern just says "sl 1" with no direction specified, which way should I slip? Purlwise is the more common unstated default in most published patterns, specifically because it leaves the stitch untwisted — but check the pattern's own abbreviation key if one is provided, since conventions do vary.