How to make a bobble

Slowly!  Carefully!  Not while watching TV!  I recently started a cardigan that required a row of bobbles at the bottom, which was very pretty.  I spent an AGE doing them and managed to get only one wrong - I somehow ended up with a hole next to the bobble which I had planned to sew closed later.  However, I soon realised that the yarn I was using for the cardigan (it was a substitute) wasn't working and abandoned the work.  

I was really please, though, that I'd had a go at making bobbles.  I'd always believed that they were very difficult and that I wouldn't be able to manage, or wouldn't have the patience for them.  But, as long as there aren't too many, it isn't hard at all.  It does require patience, though.  And my top tip is to pull that yarn VERY tightly when finishing it off.  Also, when you knit or purl the next row, knit very tightly again.  And no, I have no idea how I managed to make that hole next to the bobble - obviously I must have forgotten one of the many steps!  Easy to do.

So concentrate!

I did a practise square before starting the project

The row of bobbles long the hem

A close up

My new project with Sirdar's Pattercake

I love all the yellows for spring!

I've discovered that a fancy bag from a shop makes a great place to keep my WIP!

Doll's Cardigan

When I spotted this cardi on a toy rabbit in issue 170 of Simply Knitting (first time in years that I had bought a knitting mag), I had an inkling that it might fit my doll.

I worked out recently that this doll is at least 50 years old - possibly older as I think she may have been second hand.  She arrived one Christmas wearing a pink A-line dress (very 1960's) and had a blue pram, which I remember wheeling around the house for years.  My mother had crocheted her a blue granny square blanket, which I've also still got.

The doll came back to England with me as I thought my daughter would be interested in playing with her.  She wasn't, needless to say.  When my mother died 10 years ago, I wasn't capable of doing anything except knitting and sewing clothes for this doll.  I worked without patterns and - since my knitting wasn't very good in those days - the results were sweetly amateurish to say the least.

But at last my doll (and she is mine again) has a cardigan knitted properly from a pattern.  I used an entire ball of Rico Baby Dream DK to make it, including the headscarf.  The latter was a bit small so I've joined the ends (under her hair) with elastic.

The poor doll never had a good head of hair.  Half her eyelashes have gone and she's got a gammy leg .... and this was the state of her when I got her!  But I love knitting tiny things so may get more inventive.  Lucky dolly.