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.

My Xerophyte Shawl pattern includes mini-bobbles which are worked using a method sometimes known as the Estonian Button Stitch, which has the advantage of producing small, flattish bobbles without the need to turn your work (and it's much faster than any other bobble method I've tried).

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.