Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Explaining 'yo'

"p1, yon, k4, s1, k2tog, psso, k4, yfwd, yrn, pl, k1"

In that 1 row of instructions alone, there are 3 terms that got me scratching my head - 'yon' (yarn over needle), 'yfwd' (yarn forward), and 'yrn' (yarn round needle)... huh? I tried moving the yarn forward & back to try and imitate what the terms must surely be telling me to do, but only succeeded in looking like I invented some kind of new knitting dance.

Finally I did an online search & roughly managed to understand that these were all terms referring to 'yarn-over', the difference in each term just depended on whether the yarn-over was done between knit or purl stitches.

Therefore, if the sequence is :
k1, YO, p1 - that YO is called a 'yfwd' + 'yrn'
p1, YO, k1 - the YO is a 'yon'
k1, YO, k1 - the YO is a 'yfwd'
p1, YO, p1 - the YO is a 'yrn'

I may be over-simplifying matters but isn't a yarn-over just that - taking the yarn from front to back over the right needle? What is done to the yarn after that will be whatever is normally done - i.e. bring the yarn in front if the next stitch is a purl, and bring the yarn behind if the next stitch is a knit. Why make it so complicated?

Oh well, guess this falls under the same category as single crochet / double crochet between American & British terminology... you say 'to-MAY-toes', I say 'to-MAH-toes'...

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