I’ve taken some additional photos of recent projects.  I’m still horrible as a photographer, sometimes taking 20-30 pictures before something is in focus!  It’s a good thing that I have a day job….

This bead crochet rope necklace was done with silk thread, white jade, turquoise, and onyx 4mm beads to a pattern I got out of Patterns & Graphing for Bead Crochet Ropes by Judith Bertoglio-Giffin.  This very nice abstract design along with the turquoise reminded me so much of the trips we took to Santa Fe with the black etched pottery and turquoise jewelry made by the Native Americans in the region.

I don’t tend too wear much silver jewely so I opted to use the turquoise toggle clasp instead.   I think it adds a bit of interest to the piece.  Its approximately 18″ and it took about three 16″ strands of the semi-precious beads which I bought at NewYorkBeads in NYC.  It took me about 3 hours to actually crochet, however, many, many, many hours of stringing time due to the fact that I took this project on a plane trip to California and the strung beads ended up in a tangled mess during the security checkpoint and I spent many hours on that trip untangling the strung beads.

This other project, really started out as an effort in swatching. 

I had just prior completed a bead knitted purse in cotton and size 11 white beads when I spotted these lovely colored blue iris beads and thought how pretty they would look on this royal blue thread I had from a lace knit project.  The thread is 10/2 Tencel www.halcyonyarn.com and I hadn’t seen or heard of anyone doing a beaded knit bag with Tencel before so I decided to try it out to see if it would hold up.

The smaller picture although out of focus gives you a sense of the size of the purse.  When I finished knitting the purse, I checked www.lacis.com for a very pretty 2″ silvertone frame which I think works perfectly.

This was quite a fun project to knit.  I wasn’t so worried about screwing it up the way I did with the project before as I kept reminding myself that it was only a test.  The project was from the BagLady Press book http://www.baglady.com/PendantEtc2SUM.htm; the Sundance pattern.  This bag is about big enough to put a lipstick or a key in. 

My plan is to use these beads and thread in another project, so I bought 1/2 kilo of beads and already had the 2 spools of thread on hand.

As you can see, for the past several months I’ve been on something of a bead phase in my knitting.  I’ve certainly made many other things without beads which I’ll continue to post. 

I’m currently working on the Karabella Feather and Fan Top which has a modified Feather and Fan pattern using k4tog and k4togtbl.  Boy is that tough on the fingers.  I’m working in a 100% silk 2/5 Gemstone Silk dk weight yarn.  (Coincindentally also from Halcyon).  I’ve finished the front and I’m now working on the back.  In order to not jinx it, I won’t post pictures until its finished.

Until next time ……