Blobs at beginning of print

I'm printing PLA and I keep getting blobs of plastic at the beginning of my print. Ordinarily it wouldn't be a big deal since it starts by printing the "skirt", but the blob just loves to stick to the nozzle and rear its ugly head later. If I'm fast enough I can knock it away with a toothpick and the rest of the print continues without a hitch. Otherwise I usually have to cancel my print since it will usually mess up the first layer. Any ideas?

You could try nophead's oozeless start technique:

[hydraraptor.blogspot.com.au]

My start gcode is to go to home, lift the head 7 millimeters, extrude 3 mm of filament, retract 2 millimeters, pause 5 seconds to give me a chance to clean off the head, drop back down 7 millimeters, and resume. This works well for me - perfectly in fact with skeinforge, and. near perfectly with slic3r.