Yarn Over: How to Do It Step by Step

Yarn Over is a knitting stitch that makes creates an eyelet hole and adds one stitch. Makers reach for it for lace, eyelet buttonholes, decorative increases. It is rated beginner here, so it is a good stitch to learn early and practice on a small swatch before a real project.

1. Bring the working yarn to the front between the needles. 2. Take the yarn over the top of the right needle to the back. 3. Work the next stitch as instructed; the yarn over stays on the needle as a loop. 4. On the next row, work the yarn over as a regular stitch unless told otherwise. Work slowly for the first few repeats, keep your tension even, and check the result against the steps before continuing across a whole row or motif.

US patterns abbreviate yarn over as yo. UK patterns write it as yo (older patterns: yfwd, yrn), so always check whether a pattern uses US or UK terms before you start, because the same abbreviation can mean a different stitch. Pattern keys list every abbreviation used, usually near the materials list.

Yarn Over suits lace, eyelet buttonholes, decorative increases. To size a project before you start, the increase or decrease evenly calculator will balance the increases against the decreases, and how to measure knitting gauge walks through a full project from the beginning.

The most common problems are: wrapping the yarn the wrong way, which closes the hole; dropping the loop on the next row; forgetting a matching decrease in lace patterns. Most are easy to spot if you pause after a few repeats and compare your work with the steps. Good light helps a great deal, especially with dark yarn or thread.

Stitches closely related to yarn over include Knit Two Together, Slip Slip Knit, Make One Left. Learning them together makes patterns easier to read, because many designs switch between related stitches to change texture, height or line. Each has its own step-by-step page in the stitch dictionary.