Yo Adrian!

Yo, as in YO, a familiar abbreviation to knitters for yarn over.  A simple stitch really…just bring the yarn when knitting from the back of the work to the front of the work by going under the right needle and, then, back over the right needle to knit the next stitch. The result is an extra stitch.  Sounds so simple, doesn’t it? I thought so too until I started the lace edging for Andrea’s Shawl.



Andrea’s Shawl on Ravelry



What happened? I knit the first 24 rows (that sounds like a lot but the edging is knit first in a 7-9 stitch pattern with a 4 Row repeat so it really was only a few minutes of knitting). It didn’t look anything like it was supposed to look.  Why? It appears that I have been knitting YO completely wrong forever!! Instead of under and over, my yarn went over and under.  Honestly, I never noticed a problem until this pattern.  So, I hurried on over to the Knitwitch website and watched her video on yarn over.  With the correct stitch correctly on my needles, I’ve knit about 100 repeats of the pattern now:
I love the way the YO’s (when knit correctly!!) make this lattice pattern:

With only 30 or so repeats left, I plan to start the lace portion of this shawl tonight.  Then, I’m going to go through some of the patterns that I’ve knit using YO incorrectly and decide if there’s anything I’d like to try again soon to see how the project knits with the correct stitch!