No-Turn Bobble

Hi, this is Whitney from Purl Soho, and I’m going to show you a No-Turn Bobble. Like it sounds, this is a really clever way to make a bobble without having to turn your work. If you’ve ever made a traditional bobble, then you know the nuisance of having to flip your work around two, four, six times to build up stitches for your bobble. This is particularly cumbersome if the piece is as big as our Chamomile Blanket, for example. So for that project, as well as our Snowberry mittens, we developed a No-Turn Bobble that draws on the lessons of an I-cord. It’s super easy, and most importantly, it makes really nice, plump, round bobbles that you will want to add to everything. Here’s how you do it.

So you’re going to knit to the stitch in your pattern where it calls for a bobble, and you’re going to start by knitting into the front and back of this next stitch on your left needle. So you insert the right tip into the front leg of that stitch like you’re knitting. Then wrap the yarn around your needle and pull a stitch through without allowing that stitch off the left needle. Insert the right tip into the back leg of that same stitch. Bring your needle to the back of the work and insert it into the back leg just like that. Wrap the yarn around and pull a stitch through again, keeping that stitch on the left needle.

Now do that all again. Insert the right needle into the front leg, wrap the yarn around, pull a stitch through and insert the needle into the back leg, wrap the yarn and pull the stitch through, and now you can finally let that stitch off the left needle. And you can see here that you have four stitches on your right needle.

Next, simply slip those four stitches from your right needle back to the left needle. Just slip the stitches one by one, all four of them.

And now just knit those four stitches like usual. So just wrap your yarn and make a knit stitch. Knit all four just like that. Here’s the last stitch.

And then once again, slip those four stitches back onto your left needle. One, two, three, four, and we’re going to knit them again. Your pattern might have you repeat that 1 or 2 more times, depending on the size of the bobble. So just keep repeating those steps as many times as called for, ending with the stitches on the right needle.

Now we have made four stitches out of one, so we need to decrease three stitches to get back down to one stitch. To do that, simply pass the second stitch on the right needle over the first stitch and off the needle just like you’re binding off. So do that again. Insert the tip of your left needle into the second stitch, pass it over the first stitch and off the needle, and then do that with the last stitch. Grab it with your left tip, pass it over the first stitch, and off the needle.

You’ll have just one stitch on the right needle and a cute plump bobble underneath it. And from here, you can just keep knitting along until your next bobble.

And that’s how you knit a No-Turn Bobble!