Knitting With Beads

To the trained eye, this may look like a watermelon bag. To me, it doesn't look like much of anything yet; but it is, in fact, a watermelon bag. The focus of my knitting class this month is knitting with beads, and Donna offered us a choice of two projects--either the watermelon bag or a small beaded bag. Overachiever that I am, I elected to make both.

The watermelon bag is 8 or so inches in diameter and 15 inches tall, a pretty good sized bag really. Donna suggested it would make a good knitting bag, and I might just do that. It will have a drawstring top, and we'll learn how to make an I-cord for the drawstring.

I just loved the way this small knitted bag looked made up in perle cotton and had to try one. This yarn is actually satin bamboo and very close in gauge to a #3 perle cotton. It is the finest yarn I've worked with so far, and I spent hours one afternoon fixing multiple mistakes, because the stitches kept sliding off the ends of the needles. It was awfully frustrating, but I was determined to fix it rather than rip it out and start over, and I learned a lot about recognizing and correcting my mistakes that way. This bag also has a drawstring closure, but we'll make a twisted cord for this one.

Learning to work with beads has been fun, and not as difficult as I thought.

With the leftover yarn from the little green sweaters, I made a couple of baby-sized beanies. I tried to make a pom pom for one of them, but it looked quite bedraggled, and it was suggested to me that I needed to wind more yarn for it. I'll give that another try some day.

From one of the last posts, Norma wanted to know if I had a yarn stash yet. Actually, yes, and it's startling how quickly it developed. Most of what I've collected so far is for specific projects, but I can foresee a time when I'll buy yarn like I buy quilting cottons--for no other reason than because I like it. This is not necessarily a good thing! Storage is already getting to be a problem!