Fun With Beads
Happy Monday! I hope that you are all safe and well; we're still good here.
I got a little obsessed yesterday working on the two beading projects I told you about.
The first one, Cassio Collar, is finished and ready for wearing:
It's an elegant combination of sparkley seed beeds, laceweight yarn, and - believe it or not - double knitting (what an unintended theme!!). I've already got some ideas on other things I can do with this basic framework.
The second one, Presto Cowlo, is well underway:
There is a total of five of the bands that you see alternating here - so I'm just about 30% done already! The pattern is easy to memorize and it tells me very quick when I've made a mistake. It's also very forgiving - it's easy to add or remove a yarnover, or to detect if I've worked the wrong pattern block for some reason (both of these have happened more than once already!).
I'm still happy with my decision to add the beads as I go (over the stitch using a teeney crochet hook), rather than string them all on beforehand and slip each one on as needed, but I see that each sits fairly low on its stitch; the yarn is lofty enough such that they don't move around. It sort of puffs the upper part of the stitch out, adding some additional texture that I don't like. You might be able to see that to a certain extent here:
Before I block this, I'll tweak each bead so that it is a little further up in the stitch; that way, if the yarn blooms after swimming, they'll be locked in even more firmly!
In wildlife news - there were 4-5 deer wandering about the place throughout the day yesterday, and the birds are also very busy doing their bird things. Some nights are still very cool, but it's easy to tell that Spring is underway!
I got a little obsessed yesterday working on the two beading projects I told you about.
The first one, Cassio Collar, is finished and ready for wearing:
It's an elegant combination of sparkley seed beeds, laceweight yarn, and - believe it or not - double knitting (what an unintended theme!!). I've already got some ideas on other things I can do with this basic framework.
The second one, Presto Cowlo, is well underway:
There is a total of five of the bands that you see alternating here - so I'm just about 30% done already! The pattern is easy to memorize and it tells me very quick when I've made a mistake. It's also very forgiving - it's easy to add or remove a yarnover, or to detect if I've worked the wrong pattern block for some reason (both of these have happened more than once already!).
I'm still happy with my decision to add the beads as I go (over the stitch using a teeney crochet hook), rather than string them all on beforehand and slip each one on as needed, but I see that each sits fairly low on its stitch; the yarn is lofty enough such that they don't move around. It sort of puffs the upper part of the stitch out, adding some additional texture that I don't like. You might be able to see that to a certain extent here:
Before I block this, I'll tweak each bead so that it is a little further up in the stitch; that way, if the yarn blooms after swimming, they'll be locked in even more firmly!
In wildlife news - there were 4-5 deer wandering about the place throughout the day yesterday, and the birds are also very busy doing their bird things. Some nights are still very cool, but it's easy to tell that Spring is underway!
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