Knitting with beads...and some lace

If you're looking for a way to make your handknits blingy-er, try beads. Before these two projects I had knitted with beads to make a few pairs of pulsevante - Norwegian for pulse warmers. They're like long wrist bands that cover the pulse point in your wrist and lower part of your hand.

I learned about them while in Norway in 2007 for my friend's wedding. The night before her wedding there was a party that started with a boat cruise. The temperature dropped pretty quickly and I didn't have gloves with me. My friend's cousin plucked a pair of pulsevante out of her pocket and handed them to me. Turns out her mom had knit them for her. I was utterly amazed at how simple and chic they were. I started asking her all kinds of questions about construction and patterns. When the cruise ended and we arrived at the party I returned the pulsevante. My new friend told me to keep them because she had talked to her mom about my interest in them. Her mom had promised to make her a new pair so I could take a pair home with me.

At that time there were not many patterns in English for pulse warmers, so I took a snowflake design from a traditional Norwegian pattern and made pulse warmers. I didn't know how to knit with beads, so I guessed at how to do it by trial and error. They turned out great and I gave them to a few friends as Christmas presents.

After the Skywalker shawl turned out so well I thought I'd check out Laura Nelkin's Knitting with Beads class at Craftsy. The first project is a knitted bracelet, Pioneer. It's a great first project to get the hang of knitting with beads that are strung on beforehand and beads that are placed over stitches as you go. Can you say super simple and quick gift?

Pioneer in Claudia Hand Painted Yarns, Fingering Weight, Graphite w/ Toho size 6 and 8 seed beads

The knitted jewelry got me thinking about my nieces - 3 of whom live in Houston and have very little need for wool hats or mittens. I decided to check out the jewelry...I'm slightly obsessed with Laura Nelkin's designs right now so I purchased Adorn and Adorn Anew

Ribband in Claudia Hand Painted Yarns, Fingering Weight, Graphite w/ rectangular Toho beads

I'm thinking my nieces will each be receiving a Ribband for Christmas this year. And, since I was very silly and took on WAY TOO MUCH this past December, I'm going to work on their Christmas presents throughout the year. I'll probably have them completed before summer gets to the Mid-South!

And finally, I continued the Knit This: Mastering Lace Shawls class by casting on Clarus. Originally I was going to cast on for the larger version in a cobweb weight yarn, however, I'm still not feeling like a Lace Master. I cast on Jojoland Melody (fingering weight superwash wool). Not sure how I like the color changes with the lace pattern, but it's hard to tell until it's blocked. Even if I don't like it, it's extra practice at knitting lace. I'll post photos when it's completed.

Clarus in Jojoland Melody

This is not the lace you're looking for...

I just celebrated my 15th anniversary of knitting! My best friend taught me to knit while I was visiting her in Trondheim, Norway in mid-January 1998. It was a beautiful introduction to knitting! Her girlfriends would come over in the evening and we would have coffee and eat ice cream. They worked on beautiful traditional Norwegian style sweaters and cardigans (which would be steeked later, eek!) and I struggled on a headband.

My friend picked out the pattern which required me to: 1.) knit in the round, 2.) follow a pattern chart (which was considerably easier than learning Norwegian in order to read said pattern), and 3.) it was traditional Norwegian colorwork (2 different color yarns). In the ensuing years I have come to find that colorwork, chart reading, and working in the round scares some people so much they won't even try it. I'm so glad I learned to knit with "hard techniques" because I haven't been afraid to try new things. If you're new to knitting (or contemplating joining our world), don't be afraid to try things. Frankly, the whole process of learning to knit can feel awkward because you're trying to get your hands to do things they're not used to doing.

For the longest time I didn't know how to answer the question: what's you're favorite thing to knit? "I don't really have a favorite, I just love to knit." I would say. But, about a year ago it dawned on me, what I like best is using new materials - knitting with a fiber I haven't worked with before - or learning new techniques. With all that said...I have avoided lace.

I made one lace shawl to accompany the dress to my best friend's wedding (same one who taught me to knit) almost 6 years ago. There were several things stacked against me and the lace shawl:
1.) I didn't know about "lifelines". A lifeline is a piece of thread you weave through a row of completed stitches so that if you drop a stitch or get things completely messed up, you only have to rip back a few rows instead of needing to start over...which happened to me several times.
2.) I used thread-weight yarn - 800+ yards of thread weight yarn. What the heck was I thinking? Oy! It was too fine a yarn to learn how to knit lace on.
3.) I had a deadline. In general, this is not a good idea when you're a newbie to something. I managed to get enough length on the shawl the day before we left, I soaked it, blocked it, and had to have fans on to help it dry in time. Double oy!
The whole process left me frustrated and I wasn't all that pleased with my work. Since then I have loved the look of lace, but have shied away from it...until now.

My last post was about how much I love Craftsy and this will be a continuation on that theme. I signed up for Laura Nelkin's Knit This: Mastering Lace Knitting. First, she plays with Star Wars themes, and I love that, but more importantly, her explanations are very clear. She breaks it down into sections and explains it along the way.  Also, she goes through each pattern line of the shawl.

I've read lace patterns and struggled to understand the construction, especially the starting point for half circle shawls.  Last night, a big lightbulb went on in my head. I started working on the Skywalker shawl yesterday and I'm loving lace! I can see why there are people out there who only knit lace.

I've misplaced the tag with the yarn info (and I will find it before I post the finished item), but I'm pretty sure it is a superwash merino sock yarn. It's a lovely raspberry color and while I would have loved to get some silk/merino/utterly gorgeous yarn for this, I wanted to learn on something simple. I'll splurge in the future.

If you have been longing to become a Jedi Master in Lace Knitting, then I highly recommend this class.