« Worst fit award | Main | Pants Testing »
MaryElla
Monday, November 07, 2005
Beaded knitting is not like regular knitting--not much anyway. Not that it isn't the same old beloved knits and purls, but the motions and even the tools are different. While I worked on this MaryElla cuff for several days, the project did not aggravate my thumbs the way knitting usually does.
I suppose it is the action of slipping the beads across that keeps it from being repetitive and bothersome. The other thing saving my thumbs is that the knitting is rather boring. I wouldn't stick with it for more than a few minutes at a time, and my thumbs have thanked me for it!
Besides the knitting itself being boring, the needles are very small (size 0000) stainless steel double-points. Combine the slick shiny needles with perle cotton, and you get a slippery knitting experience. If you don't keep things under control, the whole mess will slide right off your needles and onto the floor.
And don't even let me get started about stringing all those beads, either. They came in a pill bottle style container, and you used a dental floss threader to get them onto the perle cotton. This process took quite some time, and I had to wear my reading glasses to do it. Fortunately I didn't need nearly as many as specified in the pattern, mostly because of my miniscule 5.5" wrists. I think I strung about 950, and didn't need quite all of those.
The finished object is a distinct pleasure, and once I make something to wear with it, will be fun to wear! The weight of it is nice in your hand, but not too heavy on your wrist. The pattern called for closing it with snaps, which to my way of thinking, is less than the bracelet deserves. As you can see, I closed mine with button loops and pearl, shank-style buttons.
Surprisingly, the buttons do not slip to the top when you wear the cuff. Despite my bracelet being a tiny bit loose, the buttons stay on the bottom. Though they look pretty enough to be a feature, I'm glad they stay where I intended for them to be.
Oh, and need you ask? I'm starting another one any day now!
Pattern: MaryElla by Adrienne Robson, from Knitty.com
Materials: DMC Perle 8, and 11/0 seed beads purchased in a kit from EarthFaire.com. This is the "periwinkle + amethyst-lined crystal AB bead" combo.
Making button loops is easy. With a sewing needle attach your thread at (or work over to) the desired location. Loop a single thread over to a location almost as wide as the button. Take a stitch. Loop another thread back to the starting point and secure that end. Do not cut. Make buttonhole stitches over the two threads all the way across. It won't take long and looks great!