April 21, 2016

Fixing yo Mistakes

I use a lot of lace patterns in my designs because they look beautiful, and they’re fun and interesting to work. Unlike plain stockinette or garter stitch, there is always something happening! A yo here, a k2tog there, a k3tog followed by a yo2, etc. Lace patterns have a lot going on, which means there are a lot of opportunities for making mistakes. Fortunately, yarn over (yo) mistakes are pretty easy to fix, if you catch them within a row or two of making them. The photos below show how to fix a yo in the wrong place, and how to add a yo where one is missing.

First, compare your knitting to the pattern. In this photo there is one extra yo and one missing yo on Row 7, the last RS row. One WS row has been worked since the mistakes were made, so the mistakes are 2 rows below the stitches on the needle.Work in pattern until you reach the extra yo. There’s no need to rip out whole rows for a tiny mistake like this!

Drop the extra yo off the needle. That’s it! The yarn over isn’t connected to the stitches below it, so it will only unravel to the row where it was made. There will be a little extra yarn where the yo used to be, but you can usually wiggle the slack along the row until it disappears. In this case we’ll need that extra yarn to create the missing yo.

This is where the yo should be. If you pull the needles apart a little you can see the 2 strands that are going to form our yo. It looks a lot like the one we just took apart.

First, pick up the lower strand

and place it on the left needle.

Then pick up the strand that was above it and place it on the left needle. The strand from 2 rows below is on the left and the strand from 1 row below is to the right of it.