When I came up with the idea for my Xerophyte Shawl (you can read about its inspiration here), I wanted to include bobbles at intervals in the stockinette fabric - but working hundreds of full-sized bobbles was more effort than I was honestly prepared to make. And so I was very happy to come across Sarah Wilson’s article for Interweave, 5 Ways to Work a Bobble, which includes a method for making mini-bobbles using a wrapped-stitch method sometimes known as the Estonian Button Stitch. This method has the advantage of producing a small, flattish bobble without needing to turn your work, and is much faster than any other bobble method I’ve tried.

The method:

insert needle between 2nd and 3rd sts on LH needle
draw yarn through, place loop on LH needle
k1-tbl, sl2 purlwise
pass 3rd st on RH needle over slipped sts and off.

And here’s a video demonstrating my mini-bobble method, first slowly and step-by-step, and then working a bobble row on a swatch for my Xerophyte Shawl.

The Xerophyte Shawl was first published in Making Magazine Issue No.7 / DESERT, and is now available as a single pattern download on Ravelry and Payhip.