Bobbled Cowl

I love knitting with big yarn. I was able to whip this little guy out in a day and a half. I've wanted to knit myself a cowl for a while now, but I hate knitting stuff that's just a lot of the same. No measuring, just knit until you're out of yarn and you have yourself a scarf. Knit it in the round and it's a cowl. Booorrriiinnng. So, the day before yesterday, I wandered into my local yarn shop, Knitpurl (whose email list is less like spam and more like a rad knitting blog) to pick up some yarn for my new cowl. I needed something thick so that my attention span would last longer than the project, and I stumbled upon some very reasonably priced merino wool in so many beautiful colors that I could only narrow down to two. I took it home, and in a matter of hours I had this:

It was my first time knitting bobbles, and I have to say, they might be the easiest thing ever. This could be because I skipped all of the hard stuff my knitting books told me to do, but who can really tell, right?

To make this, I used size 15 needles, and cast on 88 stitches, connecting in the round. I knit 4 rib stitch rows in one color, and then knit straight across in the same color. For the rest of the main body of the cowl, I alternated colors in each row. I knit 5 rows between bobbles so that their colors would alternate, and once I ran out of yarn in the color I started with, I finished with a rib stitch in the other color.

I'm happy with the result of the bobbles, though I know I did something wrong. Every time I followed instructions, though, something just didn't make sense, or I'd end up with the wrong number of stitches, so I just made up my own directions:

Bobble row:

k5, yo k1 yo k1 yo k1, turn the needles

Slip the stitch you just knit and purl to the first yo, turn the needles

Slip the first stitch, knit to the end of your bobble, turn the needles

p2tog 3 times and turn needles.

Slip the first stitch and k2

Repeat until the end of the row.

On the next bobble row, knit 8 before the first bobble.