Don’t you love an “a-ha” moment? Who was the first person to mix strawberries with melted chocolate? He/she must have had an “a-ha” moment while playing my favorite game, “What if . . . ?”
Sunday morning as I was knitting a sample swatch for my bead knitting class that afternoon, I had an “a-HA.” I had chosen a bad scrap yarn for this swatch. It was splitty. “Splitty” isn’t a word used by many people–except knitters. Knitters understand when this word is applied to a yarn, and they always react appropriately–a head shake, a sigh, a commiseration. Anyway, the yarn was splitty.
As I attempted to add beads with the crochet hook method, I kept pulling partial pieces of the yarn through the bead. Maybe 4 out of 8 plies with the other 4 bunching at the bottom of the bead. Hardly a nice sample to show to a new group of students. I soldiered on and finally got a swatch I wasn’t ashamed of.
Then I got to the bind off samples. The object is to get the bead right on the edge of the work. Not above or near, but exactly on the edge., This required that ^&*(* crochet hook again. The bead must be placed on the stitch which will be bound off.
Failure. Failure. Failure. AHA!
Why not thread it on just as you do with a bead needle or a dental floss threader? Because you cannot get the needle/threader through the individual stitch. Oh, yes, you can.
Gently tear the threader sides apart–click photo to enlarge
Insert one leg through the stitch–
Put both legs through the bead–
Pull the st through the bead–
K1, bind off!
A-HA! Conquered the bind off and the splitty yarn!
The best part of knitting is you never stop learning.
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