Will bobble for food

First of all, I've heard from Mary Burr, the pattern author of my current project, Aibhlinn encouraging me to try the bobbles. How cool is it that she found my blog and wrote to encourage me? She recommended that I practice on scrap yarn and that's just what I did. I learned to bobble and like she said, once you learn it, it's not that bad. It's better if you have some stretchier yarn, I'm guessing, but all in all it's not that bad.

So I finished my bobbles and aside from the cast-on mistake where I had 144 stitches cast on instead of 143 with an M1 to be done later, my swirling rib pattern was going quite well. I was slightly concerned about how loose the work is but I was still knitting along.

Let me stop here and remind you, dear reader, once again - don't knit when you're sleepy. Can you tell what's coming next?

It was after 3am and I decided to knit a row before going to sleep while I watched the last episode of a Sopranos marathon. It's a rather easy pattern of essentially k3, p3 with variations done at the beginning and end of rows and in my getting sleepy state I somehow purled when I should have knitted or whatever. I just realized that I had done something bassackwards and when I tried to unknit it, I dropped a stitch. Now I'm half sleepy and full panicky. I try to catch it, more drop. Now I have a ladder of dropped stitches and that's just beyond my skills to repair.

So as I watched Paulie get all up in Christopher's shit for whining to Tony about him, I frogged my cowl. Bobbles and all.

I began knitting it again today and I've made some changes. First, I've switches from 5mm to 4mm needles (the pattern calls for 4.5mm needles but I swear I've never seen 4.5mm needles where I live) in hopes that 1mm less needle diameter will make bobbling easier (I think it has) and that the cowl will knit up a little tighter. No I did not knit a swatch to check the gauge and I'm sure one day I'll be sent to knitter's hell for that.

And this time I did cast on 143 stitches. I'm sure of it. And this time I'm not so intimidated about the M1 that's looming ahead. I've read the directions in Stitch 'n Bitch again and they're making sense now. But I think I'll still do it a few times with scrap yarn before I chance having to frog this cowl again.

Anyway I'm half done with the bobbles and you know, Mary Burr was right. I'm digging the bobbles. I got the hang of them and they're actually rather fun to make. Need bobbling done? Send it my way. I am practically a professional now.