In the Minamo pullover, I used Twisted Yarn Over increases, and not just the good old regular Yarn Over (YO) but the Backwards Yarn Over (BYO) too – but knit into the back leg and the front leg respectively to twist the holes shut.
Increasing like this might seem needlessly different when the usual Make One (M1) increases are a lot better known and usually suffice, but I think Twisted Yarn Over increases are better suited for the contiguous set-in sleeve construction.
The shoulder of the contiguous set-in sleeve is built up by increasing every row or round on either side of the shoulder seam. The Make One increases are made by picking up the strand between two stitches and knitting into it. By increasing, you’re tightening the stitches from which you just grabbed a little bit of yarn. When you’re doing this every single row, those little bits of stolen length start to have an impact – the shoulder seam can become tight and the stitches growing out of it a little ruffly.
The Twisted Yarn Over increases essentially work up to the same thing as the Make One increases, except the strand into which you knit is a yarn over made in the previous row – giving plenty of yarn to make a new stitch into without taking from its neighbours and influencing your gauge.
Note: The following sections are directional, so if you’re a left-handed (mirror) knitter, skip ahead to where I’ve flipped things for you!
Left leaning: M1L vs YO
The M1L stitch is made by entering the strand between the stitches below from the front to the back, and knitting into the back leg to twist this strand shut. Now check this: the strand, once on the needle, looks like a YO – and it would be, if you’d done a YO in the previous row.
I don’t think I need to tell you this, but the YO is done by bringing the yarn to the front, over the top of the needle and to the back – like scooping up yarn for a regular knit stitch. In the next row, work into the back leg to twist the YO shut.
Right leaning: M1R vs BYO
The M1R stitch is made by entering the strand between the stitches below from the back to the front, and knitting into the front leg to twist this strand shut. The strand, as you’ve probably figured out by now, looks like a BYO because it almost is!
The BYO is done with the opposite motion of a regular YO – by bringing your yarn from the back up over the top of needle to the front, all the way to the back again. It’s the mirror of a regular YO. In the next row, work into the front leg to twist the BYO shut.
A comparison
These two swatches compare the M1R and the Twisted BYO increases, done on every row. The swatch with the M1R increases is a little bit tighter looking and actually a bit wrinkled. Yes, it’s a small difference, but I think it’s worth it. If you don’t, or don’t like the Twisted Yarn Over increases, feel free to swap them out! They can look a little loose sometimes, especially if you’re working with a yarn with less give or in a looser gauge, so I’d advise doing a few of these increases when you swatch.
Right and Wrong Side
A YO on the Right Side is a YO on the Wrong Side of your work, always. This is because a YO (and of course a BYO) is like a helix around your needle, and helices are chiral – no matter which way you look at them, they’ll always be spiralling in the same direction.
Sometimes knitters talk about clockwise and anti-clockwise in regards to wrapping yarn around a needle, but I don’t like that terminology because those get switched depending on perspective, up or down the needle.
So: if you’ve got a YO on your needle and flip the work over to the other side, it will still look like a YO – therefore you always work YOs at the same spot, and BYOs in their own spot elsewhere. The same applies for M1L/M1R increases.
This funny looking swatch represents a part of the shoulder in Minamo and – following the construction in the pattern – I worked only Twisted YO increases in grey (left), and only Twisted BYO increases in beige (right), on both the RS and the WS of the work.
Show left-handed (mirrored) descriptions
Lefty friends, in this example I’ve swapped out the righty M1R for the lefty M1L (and vice versa), because naturally these stitches lean in the other direction for us and their names would otherwise be incorrect. For what it’s worth though, I don’t swap these out when I’m following a conventional pattern. In my mind, an M1R leans left and vice versa. This was easier in the beginning when I still had to look up instructions on how to do these increases, as the instructions themselves aren’t directional, and when I follow a pattern I don’t think about the direction things lean anyway. I tell myself M1R stands for Make One Rear (cause you enter the strand below from the rear, get it?), and just ignore the words Right and Left.
Right leaning: M1R vs YO
The M1R stitch is made by entering the strand between the stitches below from the front to the back, and knitting into the back leg to twist this strand shut. Now check this: the strand, once on the needle, looks like a YO – and it would be, if you’d done a YO in the previous row.
I don’t think I need to tell you this, but the YO is done by bringing the yarn to the front, over the top of the needle and to the back – like scooping up yarn for a regular knit stitch. In the next row, work into the back leg to twist the YO shut.
Left leaning: M1L vs BYO
The M1L stitch is made by entering the strand between the stitches below from the back to the front, and knitting into the front leg to twist this strand shut. The strand, as you’ve probably figured out by now, looks like a BYO because it almost is!
The BYO is done with the opposite motion of a regular YO – by bringing your yarn from the back up over the top of needle to the front, all the way to the back again. It’s the mirror of a regular YO. In the next row, work into the front leg to twist the BYO shut.
A comparison
These two swatches compare the M1L and the Twisted BYO increases, done on every row. The swatch with the M1L increases is a little bit tighter looking and actually a bit wrinkled. Yes, it’s a small difference, but I think it’s worth it. If you don’t, or don’t like the Twisted Yarn Over increases, feel free to swap them out! They can look a little loose sometimes, especially if you’re working with a yarn with less give or in a looser gauge, so I’d advise doing a few of these increases when you swatch.
Right and Wrong Side
A YO on the Right Side is a YO on the Wrong Side of your work, always. This is because a YO (and of course a BYO) is like a helix around your needle, and helices are chiral – no matter which way you look at them, they’ll always be spiralling in the same direction.
Sometimes knitters talk about clockwise and anti-clockwise in regards to wrapping yarn around a needle, but I don’t like that terminology because those get switched depending on perspective, up or down the needle.
So: if you’ve got a YO on your needle and flip the work over to the other side, it will still look like a YO – therefore you always work YOs at the same spot, and BYOs in their own spot elsewhere. The same applies for M1L/M1R increases.
This funny looking swatch represents a part of the shoulder in Minamo and – following the construction in the pattern – I worked only Twisted YO increases in grey (right), and only Twisted BYO increases in beige (left), on both the RS and the WS of the work.
Remembering
I’m a big fan of mnemonics when knitting, especially if it means I don’t have to glance down at my pattern every single row. For example, when making this swatch, I knew that the BYO was done on the beige side. If I’d been using markers, I might have used a blue marker for the BYO and a yellow marker for the YO.
Another thing I like is having visual confirmation that what I’m doing is correct. A nice thing about Twisted Yarn Overs as increases is that, when working them on every row, if you are coming up to a YO that you did last row, you know you’ll be doing another YO at this spot. If you’re heading towards a BYO, you’ll do another one of those there. This confirmation disappears when there are rows between the increases, but it’s still an good trick to help get into the groove of these increases.
Will this work with the knit-in-the-back-leg (I think I use what is now called Combined Continental ) method?
Yes! As long as you are creating the yarn overs the same way as described in the post (YO: bringing the yarn to the front, then over the needle and to the back; BYO: from back to front), the leg you knit into to twist the yarn overs shut is the same – into the back leg for a YO, into the front leg for a BYO – and the resulting increased stitches will lean the correct way too.
Thank you for showing this method. It is a much quicker and less fiddly way to execute the Elizabeth Zimmerman backward loop increase.
Indeed! Personally I have to let go of the yarn to do the backward loop increase which slows me down.
Isn’t this called the Make1 (m1)?? Seems the same to me….. but maybe not. Dunno. I still use what works for me, no matter the name.
Sure, the two are quite similar, but not the same! I’ve explained the similarities as well as the differences and my reasons for choosing the yarn over method in the post. You should use whatever you prefer, but it’s good to have options for different yarns or different situations I think!
If I were to use a twisted YO increase on the right edge of a stockinette bias scarf with a slip/chain edge, which decrease would you recommend on the left edge. I tried SSK, and it doesn’t look great, but I’m not thrilled about the way the K2tog looks either.
I hate the purl bumps in kf&b, so this new increase is such a welcome find!
Thanks!
Decreases are so visible, aren’t they? Depending on what stitch pattern you’re using in the rest of the scarf you could try to camouflage the decrease by incorporating it into the stitch, or maybe into the selvedge instead.