How to: knit a bobble on one row

Bobbles are brilliant for adding individual chunky dots where you need them or as an all-over pattern for an interesting cushion or jumper and are easy to make, if a little fiddly until you get the hang of it.

The chunkier your yarn, the bulkier your bobble, so finer yarns work for buttons on toys, a little nose, or even bobble hands. Also, the more stitches you put into your bobble, the bigger it will be – follow your pattern.

To knit a bobble, you make extra stitches at a single point, work rows on the bobble only, then in effect cast off these extra stitches after the last knit row, and carry on with your knitting. The video shows a bobble that started out with one stitch that was increased to five sts. This is then treated as a mini row that you work back and forth on. Here’s the pattern for making the bobble in the video if you’d like to try it. Start with a small swatch of stocking stitch, say 10 stitches wide, work a few rows, then on a knit row: - Knit to the point of where you want to add the bobble, in the middle of the row - KFB (knit into the front and back of the stitch) twice into the next st - knit into front ONLY of stitch again and lift off = 5 sts made, turn - purl bobble sts, turn - knit bobble sts, turn - purl bobble sts, turn - knit bobble sts - use LH needle to lift second st on RH needle over first, in effect casting off the extra st. Do this four times until only one bobble st remains you are now back to the original st count Bobble forms at the back, so push through so it sits like a cap on the knitting, then carry on with pattern.The row will look a bit gappy, but will all come together right after the next row. You can see the cast off edge on the bobble but it is not noticeable. On the reverse you get what looks like a well, but is in fact a covered hole. Bobble can be made like this on any pattern, e.g. reverse st st, or even in a different colour.