Help Decreasing??

[Keegan1427]

I've been having some trouble with decreasing and I was hoping someone could help me. I know how to do a decrease I'm just not sure what the actual pattern for it should be in this case (ex, SC 3, dc1, SC 3, dc1)

I make sweaters for dogs but when it comes time to decrease the garment near the shoulders/neck I end up with this ruffle/wavy look that really bugs me. Is there a certain decrease to do? I'll attach some pics so you know what I mean.

[Granny Square]

It looks 'not wrong' to me, assuming the total stitch count is correct.  You're going to get some degree of pucker like that.  Really the only decreases I know (to turn two stitches into one) is (1) making half a stitch in 1 stitch, half a stitch in the next stitch, then pulling thru the remaining 3 loops, or (2) skipping a stitch, which would leave a little hole.

Is the decrease now done all in 1 row? If so, and assuming it won't affect the fit on the dog, possibly spreading the total # of the increases over 2 rows, maybe 1/3 on the penultimate round and 2/3 on the last round might smooth the pucker (at least it's not a huge number of stitches to rip out and experiment with).  Edit--if you spread the decreases over 2 rows, you'd want to stagger them, not put one decrease on top of the other.

Another thought that occurred to me when I was typing the first paragraph...maybe skipping a stitch instead of making 2 into 1 might improve the pucker--it would remove a little bit of fabric, so the stitches on either side of the skipped stitch would be shoved closer together.  You'd have little holes, but it might be a smoother transition/less puckery, and the holes could be a design feature.  If you sew, it would be like 'grading the seam', sort of (taking extra fabric out of a seam to make something lay flatter).

Normally you'd want to distribute increases or decreases evenly around, unless you need more or less fabric in 1 spot (bustline for example).  I'm not sure of the math for your project, but if you need to decrease 1/5th of the stitches,  what you typed would be right I'm guessing you meant 'dec' instead of 'dc'--so over 5 stitches, the 4th &  5th  are combined into 1.  Or if you want to try to skip a stitch instead, sc 4, skip 1.