Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Beaded Knitting, continued

Remember the beading I whined about over a month ago? Well, I have finally gotten back to it, after knee surgery and dealing with a problem thumb. I threaded 1400 of the 1600 beads on the yarn (Aslan Trends, Natural Luxury Yarns, "Class"), and that process shredded the yarn a bit. I don't recommend it for beaded knitting. The beads are from Czechoslovakia (via this shop) and are very sparkly, but that sparkle doesn't show up well in the photo.

I met a friend for a "working" lunch on Saturday. She has made several of these scarves, and they are beautiful; there is an endless variety to make depending on the yarns and beads chosen. She was kind and offered to guide me through the getting-started stage. It turns out that I should only have put about half the beads, or even one-quarter of them, on the yarn. Every bead on there has to be pushed along as I knit, and once past the first eleven set-up rows, I only need five beads every other row---so I'm pushing way too many beads along, even though we cut off about half of the 1400. (Arggh--I'll have to re-string them when I start the second half of the scarf.) Once I got the hang of pushing the beads into place as I knit, the project became fun. I've also found out about a new bead store in the area, but I'm refraining from checking it out, going crazy over the beads and buying even MORE beads to thread onto yarn. If I still enjoy this process after finishing the first scarf, then I'll go there and fall in love with some new beads.