Beaded knitting

Before you start to knit you need to thread the beads onto your knitting yarn. You may think that you can just thread them straight onto a large eyed tapestry needle and straight onto the yarn, but most beads don’t have a huge hole and the yarn, let alone the needle, won’t go through, so you need to find yourself a thin sewing needle and some cotton thread. Another useful implement is a dental floss threader – buy them in a chemist shop, or use dental floss and make a loop of this to thread your yarn through the eye of the bead.

Generally try to buy beads that have a big enough hole to fit a normal sewing needle through, otherwise your yarn may not fit either!

To thread beads on to the yarn:-

Thread your thin needle it with a double thread of cotton, so that the doubled-end loop hangs down. Thread your yarn through the loop leaving approximately a 20cm tail. Thread the bead over the needle, push down to the end of the cotton until you get to the yarn and continue to push over the yarn that stretches beyond the tail, until it is on a single yarn thread.

Thread as many beads as you required onto the yarn. It is better to thread more than you need rather than less, once you start knitting you can’t add more beads without breaking the yarn and rethreading them.

There are several methods to knitting with beads; this one is the simplest method.

1.         Knit to where the bead is required. Put the right needle into the stitch. Bring one of the beads up the yarn until it meets the work, so it’s in position.

2.         Knit into the next stitch, push the bead through the stitch to the right side of your work. Pull the yarn firmly in place.

On a purl row, repeat as in the knit row, but push the bead through to the right side.