When
a bobble
a
isn't
bobble ...
Charles Voth
Bobble swatch
In this issue, I’m excited to be exploring textures in
knitting. We'll look at a variety of ways to make the
surface of your knitting have something that draws
in the eye to a particular point or area of interest.
We'll start with bobbles and continue with mid-row
bind off textures, twisted stitches, knots and bumps,
and lastly a texture technique called the eyelash
stitch. It's a spin-off of the tuck stitch.
Many knitters love to hate on bobbles but a few
really do like them. In my 38 years of knitting
I haven’t met many of the latter. People dislike
bobbles because they’ve never really learned how
to make them and they seem ‘hard’ to do. Or they
dislike them because they’ve been forced to wear
sweaters with bobbles with rather unfortunate
placements in the design. Still, others dislike
bobbles because they take so long to make, what
with the stop and increase, and turn, and purl, and
turn, and knit, and turn, and decrease. It really feels
like your flow across the row is interrupted.
When I work on color work or cables, the next stripe
or fairisle motif or cable crossing are a little like
dangling carrots, the motivation to slog through the
rows of stockinette or moss stitch. I want to get to
them and work those design features to see how
they make the piece I’m working on complete. But
when it comes to bobbles, and it’s a bobble row, all
of a sudden that sink full of dishes or that unwound
hank of yarn beckons to set my knitting down and
leave those bobbles for a later time. Do you ever
feel like that? Like bobbles are an inconvenience?
Photos by Charles Voth
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KNITmuch | issue 2