To Bead or Not to Bead?

To bead! And knitting with it is the answer. There are two ways of introducing beads when working on a piece. One is with the use of a fine crochet hook to pick up the bead and hooked onto a knit loop sliding the bead onto the work (the method I used with the Beaded Butterfly and Flower Buds Bookmark-- pattern to be posted next month).


The other is pre-loading the beads on the thread before knitting the piece, then sliding the bead in between stitches on the wrong side to make the beads appear on the right side. I have to say that it was truly an experience to load it just as much as to knit with it. I followed the instructions on loading that says to tie the bead thread to the knitting thread which I did over, and over, and over, as the finer thread is sensitive to the sliding motion exerted on the bead especially at the junction of the two threads.


And if that isn't enough, since I'm not one to take the easy way in learning things so for this project, I purchased a purse brooch kit (from Purse Paradise) which uses a "0000" (hey, that's 4 zeroes!) or 1.25mm knitting needles.


So, what was supposed to take two hours to finish turned out to be a six-hour adventure-- and every minute was worth it! What do you think?