I posted a video on Flickr and YouTube with the “subtle increase”. The YouTube video has subtitles if you can’t make out my mumblings.

I figured out how to do the corresponding increase. Fool your friends… make them figure out what direction you knitted your swatch… For that, I guess you’d have to do a casting-on style bind-off, and hide the selvedges somehow.

Diagram added

More-detailed instructions

I added a diagram. The pink-highlighted section shows what is formed by the loop that is pulled through the decreased stitches. Here are the instructions to produce the diagrammed swatch.

Row 0: cast on 6.
Row 1: Purl 6.
Row 2: Knit 2, pull loop through 2 stitches as follows: Knit 1, slip one as if to knit, transfer 2 stitches back to left needle, then pull the second stitch over the first. Drop the yarn and enlarge the stitch that remains on the left needle to form a large loop. Using the "tight" end of the loop yarn, knit 2.
Row 3: Using loop yarn, purl 2. drop loop yarn, pull free end of yarn to tighten loop. Purl 2.
Row 4: Knit 4.

This is a knitted decrease that I thought up and knitted a swatch of. I thought you guys might like it. I don’t know what you’d use it for, but it has the virtue of being flat, and symmetrical, though it makes a hole.

It’s done by pulling a loop through two stitches and enlarging and using that loop to knit to the end of the row and back to the decreased stitches, then picking up the yarn again, and tightening the loop, to complete the second row.

If you’ve done any sliding-loop intarsia, this uses a similar technique.