How to place yarn overs on a diagonal line

Yesterday’s Rising Bubbles scarf is based in garter stitch, so no purling, but if you’re new to knitting or to using yarn overs to create holes, you may not know exactly how to deliberately offset your yarn overs to create a diagonal line of holes.

You can tell you are on even-numbered row in the pattern when, with the work facing you, the diagonal line slants to the right. The other way to tell is to look at the yarn over. It will be really loose, just the yarn over with no knit stitch above it. The pencil points to the loose yarn over stitch that needs to be knitted (click for big):

Once you are on an odd-numbered row, you need to know where to place your yarn overs. To offset yarn overs and create the diagonal line of holes, you need to work them one stitch to the left of where you worked the yarn over in the previous odd-numbered row. In this photo, the pencil points to the knitted stitch directly above the yarn over worked in the previous even-numbered row. Knit this stitch, then work a yarn over, knit 2 together on the next two stitches:

This is what the completed yarn over, knit 2 together looks like. The pencil points to the yarn over:

Now, how can you tell when you are ready to begin with row 1 again, especially if you’ve changed the stitch count? In particular for this scarf, you start a new pattern repeat when you have 6 garter stitch stitches to the right of the yarn overs as you go to begin a new odd-numbered row. In this photo, ready to begin an odd-numbered row, the pencil points to the 7th stitch, the knit stitch above the previous yarn over. This indicates it’s time to start with row 1 again, placing the 2nd yarn over in the row one stitch to the left of where the pencil points: