Select and yank text from Insert mode with `C-o v y` ?

[John Magolske]

I see C-o (evil-execute-in-normal-state) will, from Insert state,
execute the next command in Normal state. So while in insert mode
`C-o v` will take me into visual mode and I can select text...so far
so good. But when I try to yank that selected text with `y`, the text
is not yanked and there's a literal y in the place where the pointer
last was.

Is there some way to have `y` actually yank the text here? I'm hoping
to be able to use C-o in lieu of a leader key while in insert mode,
so I don't have to do stuff like:

    (evil-leader/set-key
      "\\" '(lambda () (interactive) (self-insert-command 1))
      "v" 'evil-visual-char
      "y" 'evil-yank
      "p" 'evil-paste-after)

Which make input of the "\" character less convenient and prevents
pasting that character from external clipboards.

TIA for any suggestions,

John

-- 
John Magolske
http://b79.net/contact