Showing posts with label beads. Show all posts
Showing posts with label beads. Show all posts

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.

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

The Dumbest Idea I Have EVER Had


I don't know what possessed me. Last week at Knit-Nite at the LYS, I saw a beautiful scarf. It had beads knitted into it, and I loved it. "What a great gift idea," I thought. And it is. I'm sure people I would knit them for would love them.

However, each scarf requires 1500 beads. FIFTEEN-HUNDRED!!!!! And how do these beads get in the scarf? Each of these FIFTEEN-HUNDRED beads is threaded onto the yarn, bead by bead, by hand. I've been at it for twenty minutes, I have about thirty beads on the yarn, and I've broken one needle already.

I am visiting older daughter in Austin this weekend, and I offered to watch her three children, to let her have absolute, complete peace and quiet so that she could string all these beads. She said "No," very emphatically.

So now I have NO idea how I am going to accomplish making this scarf. The only thing I can think of is to leave the beads, yarn, needles, and foam pad out on the dining room table, and then to work on it little by little, bead by bead.....for a very long time.