2006-04: April

Pattern: April from Swallow Hill Creations
Materials: One 242m spool of 5wt black rayon + 100gm of #6 beads
Needles: Addi Natura 3.0mm; crochet hook

Capturing the iridescense of the beads is not easy, but you can get an idea of what they look like in this photo.

What a quick knit and just in time for the cruise!

It took a few inches to get a rhythm going with the beads, but all went well.

The bit that slowed me down was finding a knot in the spool of rayon. Actually, I encountered 2 knots--the first was while I was winding off the fringe, so I thought the rest of the scarf was safe. But the other night I found another knot. And no, the beads won't slide over a knot.

Transferring the beads past the knot wasn't too bad, as I was able to rig something with the floss threader, the old thread, and the new thread. Then I did a Russian join with a sharp sewing needle and continued. Next time I'll just cut out the knot and do a Russian join there and trim the ends after sliding the beads past the join. That would be a lot faster.

Lifelines were put in every 10 rows (every 5 beaded rows) and they were helpful in catching a couple of dropped stitches. The rayon's pretty slippery so it's easy for those little guys to jump right off the end of your needle.

One more note, the rayon relaxes after knitting and ripping out. So if you have to rip out, you'll see that the reknit sections look a little different than the virgin knit rayon. It's not a big problem as the fringe weighs the ends down so it all looks fine when you're wearing it.

I knit until all the beads were gone and there's this much rayon remaining. (That's a full spool on the left.)


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