Knitting with Beads

Remember how I said I really liked this piece, from the book my cousin gave me for Christmas? This neckwarmer uses a chunky thick-and-thin yarn, and very large beads. It's knitted in the round on circular needles.

So I visited our local bead store, A Better Bead. The lady there was helpful, a wee bit grumpy, and strangely suspicious when I asked to take some photos in the store, so I could do a blog post with a live link to her website. You'd think she'd be thrilled, right? (Seriously: when I wanted to take pics of some items, she told me, "No, you can't photograph those things.") I'm wondering if she knows what a blog post it. I told her, hey -- it's free P.R. for your store and your crafters. She didn't want me to take photos of the handmade stuff in the store; I guess she thought I was going to try to steal the craft ideas/patterns? Huh? Whatever. It's a cute store. I took pictures of strings of beads.

Anywho. This past weekend, I made the neckwarmer! I had lots of time to knit. Here's how it turned out.

The pattern had some little issues with it, as patterns do.  Plus, I didn't have exactly the same yarn, and I had to use significantly smaller beads (so I used more of them). The pattern said to use 3 different sizes of circular needles, thus making the garment smaller as you go from the bottom, up to the neck turn. I only had one size, so I decided to decrease the number of stitches instead. I did this on the back of the neck, so it doesn't show.

This is a terrible shirt to pair it with, but when I wear it in public, I'll put it with a darker shirt -- red or black.

This was a little tricky, with the 2K 2P pattern, the beads pre-strung on the yarn, and the turning of the color, and the little split at the end. Lots of fun! I'd highly recommend it.