Beaded Beginnings

If you had asked me last week if I would ever knit with beads I would have said NO. I have never been a big fan of the bead and yarn combo in any of the projects I have ever seen. All that changed however, when a coworker, a new knitter, asked me to tink back a few rows for her to correct a mistake. I was instantly hooked. She is making a beaded amulet, a tiny bag that hangs around your neck to hold a magic crystal or something. Well, I am not sure what it is supposed to actually hold but it was really fascinating to work with such tiny size 0000 needles and tiny size 8 cotton yarn. The real challenge though has been to get all my thousands of beads onto the yarn. First I tried putting one on at a time by hand in the only way that made sense to me. Then I read the directions and realized there is an actual method involved here. You first string the beads onto sewing thread with a needle and then by making a loop in the thread and pulling the tail of the yarn through that loop you can string the beads much faster onto the cotton you will eventually be knitting with. Genius!
Since my typical behavior, when discovering a new craft, is to immediately throw lots of money at it, I spent an evening scouting ebay for hanks of beads and coordinating colors of cotton for making all the oodles of bags I have planned even though I have yet to even start my first. I sure hope all this positive thinking pays off or my beading supplies will end up being packed away next to all the quilting supplies I invested in last summer.