Summer Bead A Long Update #2

This is my first time beading. I know I must have a small eye beading needle around somewhere, but who knows where. I was wondering though, how one gets the yarn through a small eye ... I ordered my beads from Earth Faire and to my delight they include in the package this handy tool:


It is a dental floss threader and it works wonders for threading beads onto yarn! The yarn goes through the loop and the beads go on the other end and they are fed onto the yarn.


The dental floss threader is flexible plastic, so the loop closes up when beads are pushed down it and then onto the yarn.


The pattern I'm working on had a great tip - don't count out 1205 beads! Instead, thread some on and measure 1" of beads. Count how many beads it takes to cover 1" then do the math (its like stitch gauge).

My project calls for 1205 beads. My "bead gauge" is 12 beads cover 1". 1205 / 12 = 100.4. So, I need to thread beads on until I have 100.4" of yarn covered. That turns out to be quite a bit of yarn!! I did a little over that to be sure I had enough - about 101". And then I put some more on ... and a few more ... just to make sure.


At first I was picking up one bead at a time between my thumb and index finger and placing it on the dental floss threader. I shortly figured out that I didn't want to do this 1205+ times, so I found that if I inserted the tip of the threader into the hole of the bead a applied a little pressure the bead flipped onto its side and magically popped onto the threader!


2 hours later and I had threaded on all the beads I needed! I did take a few breaks, LOL!


After one week I completed chart A and am ready to move on to chart B. Chart B repeats 6 times, then there's another repeat with an additional 2 rows.


Here is a close up of the beading. I'm really enjoying this pattern. The only difficulty is that sometimes the beads slip along the yarn and end up where they are not supposed to be. I hope once it is blocked that will "lock" them in place a bit.



The only other frustration is that whenever I run out of working yarn, I have to stop for several minutes to shove all the beads down a length of yarn before I can resume knitting. But all in all I am enjoying it so far!

How is your beading going? Did you learn anything new? Is anything frustrating you if you're new to beading?

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