How to Work a Yarn Over

Hi, I'm Jen Lucas for The Knitting Circle. In this video, I'm going to show you how to work the basic yarn over. The yarn over is used in all kinds of knitting projects. You might see it used as shaping in a shawl or a top-down sweater. And you'll also see it used in a variety of stitch patterns particularly it's used in lace stitch patterns. So let's go ahead and get started on the basic yarn over. Yarn overs are used in a variety of ways in knitting. You will see them used to shape different projects you're working on like a shawl or a sweater but they're also used in lots of different stitch patterns, particularly in lace where the yarn overs are used to create the holes which make the lace. Here I've shown a couple of different swatches that I've done just to show you some basic yarn overs and where you might use them. In this swatch, I have stacked my yarn overs on top of each other by working a yarn over right on top of each other every right side row. And you can see that you get this interesting line here. It creates this interesting twist and you have these nice eyelids running along the side here, again you would see this most commonly in a shawl or possibly in a top-down sweater or something like that. And then here I've created a swatch that has just sort of an all over islet pattern. You can see it's really pretty. This would be a great stitch pattern for something like a baby blanket or even a basic shawl, very pretty and a very great use of a yarn over. So let's go ahead and work that yarn over stitch. In this video, we're just going to focus on working the yarn over from the right side of the work. So I'm on the right side of my work. You see it here. I just have some knitting. I'm just going to go ahead and just knit the next stitch here, then to work a yarn over we're going to bring the yarn in between the needle and then around the right-hand needle here. So we brought it in between. Now we're bringing it back around to the back, that creates our yarn over. Any pattern will tell you what the next stitch will be. I'm just going to go ahead and work a knit stitch just to lock that yarn over in place. And here you can see my yarn over here. When you look at it from the back, you can see here I just came right over the needle. Again, I'm just going to go ahead and knit the next stitch, then to do the yarn over I'm going to take my yarn from the back, in between the needle to the front, over the right hand needle and to the back again. And then again, I'll just knit the next stitch and I've created my yarn over. And that's it. You can see it's just as easy as it sounds. We're taking the yarn and putting it over the needle to create a stitch. I'm Jen Lucas for The Knitting Circle. I hope you enjoyed this video and I'll see you back here again real soon.