Add some beads to your spool-knitting! Right Now!

Here’s how my brain works: faced with a pretty steep to-do list today, I woke up with a brainstorm for spool-knitting with beads. And couldn’t get anything else accomplished until I’d explored it fully. At least I could justify my obsession as blog-fodder.

My brainstorm can be seen above: I’ve been puzzling over how to string all the beads onto the cotton string before it goes on the spool. What needle would be small enough to go through a bead, but big enough to hold the cotton?

The answer: no needle at all! Instead, I dipped the end of my string in some Stiffy, and hung it to dry. (Check it a couple times, too, to make sure that a bead of Stiffy doesn’t collect at the tip of the string.)

Now, the end of the string is rigid enough to be its own stringing tool! I’m inordinately excited about this. If I’m the last person in America to figure this out, I don’t want to know.

Wanna see how the rest of it works? Here you go:

First, string a whoooooooooole lot of beads onto your cotton string, leaving it attached to the ball as you see here. I used 6/o seed beads here — my “Froot Loop Mix.” (For the sake of a rough gauge, I strung about 16” of beads, and ended up with about 4” of beaded knit cord.)

Next, you slide all those beads away from you and free up some empty string. Then string the spool, and knit a few rows. (See my previous tutorial for that.)

Now, you can incorporate the beads. When it’s time to loop the string for your next row, slide the first bead on your string back toward you.

Now, loop the string on the spool as normal, but slide one bead at a time along the string, so that you end up with a bead in between each nail on your spool. See?

Then, knit as usual. (Incidentally, I’m loving my little loom knitting tool for spool-knitting – much easier than the small crochet hook.)

When it’s time to loop the next row, add more beads, just like you did in the previous row. See how they begin to stack up on top of one another?

Repeat this process again and again, and this will emerge from the bottom of your loom:

Pretty, no? And you can vary this strand a lot. If your spool has only three nails, you get a narrower cord. If your spool has six nails, a wider one. And if your spool has an even number of nails, then you have the option of placing a bead between every other nail, so your cord is less beaded and more knitted.

Whew! Maybe tomorrow, I’ll have sufficient attention span for that to-do list.

Tagged as: beads, spool-knitting, tutorial, yarn