When I was a beginning knitter, whenever I encountered instructions to slip one or more stitches, I always slipped it knitwise. I figured it was a 50/50 shot, and if the pattern didn't specify, then it must not matter, right?
I later learned that you should always slip stitches purlwise, unless the pattern specifies otherwise. Slipping a stitch knitwise twists it, as I would have noticed if I had ever bothered to look at the stitch once I had slipped it to the right-hand needle.
To slip a stitch purlwise, you put the right-hand needle through the stitch from back to front, as if you were going to make a purl stitch, then move that stitch onto your right-hand needle without pulling the working yarn through. To slip knitwise, you put the right-hand needle through the stitch from front to back, as if you were going to make a knit stitch.
There's more to it than knitwise or purlwise, though: there's the issue of where your working yarn should be. This is something that you don't want to guess or fudge, because when it comes to slipping stitches, the entire pattern depends on the knitter getting it right.
If you are lucky, the pattern will always have you slipping stitches the same way. The Honey Cowl (pictured above) does this: you only slip stitches on alternating rounds, and stitches are always slipped with the working yarn in front. The slipped working yarn is what creates the horizontal dashes in the pattern.
I have worked a few patterns which had you alternate holding the yarn in front or in back, and this is a somewhat maddening technique. It's painstaking work to keep moving the working yarn back and forth, and the one time I tried it, I decided the end results would not be worth the effort, and I bailed on the project halfway through.
Image courtesy Flickr/WordRidden
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