Beading in Higher Doses

Beaded bracelets turned out to be great fun and an instantly gratifying project. One bracelet takes no longer than an hour to make, the materials are inexpensive, the possibilities - limitless. The bracelets make not only nice summer accessories, but also sweet little gifts for your friends and coworkers.

Based on the beaded knit bracelet pattern in the previous post, I've been experimenting with some charted beading. The idea is to create a stack of beads on the yarn - first in, last out. The most convenient bracelet size turned out to be 9 rows of beads and 49 stitches, which gives us 24 beads per row. 24 is a very nice number, as it is divisible by 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12 and therefore provides flexibility for bead charting.

So, the first step is to create the chart. Here is a very simple one:


The crude lines on the sides show the path of the yarn. When threading the beads it is essential to follow these two basic rules:
1. Thread the beads, starting from the upper left corner of the chart, that is the last bead to be knit.
2. Follow carefully the path of the yarn through the rows of beads, otherwise you'll get a messed up picture.
This is what you might actually expect to get and some other ideas:







These I've knit so far:

Beaded Knitted Bracelet

For a bracelet 7" (approx. 18 cm) in circumference, 1/2" (1.4 cm) width:
Cotton or cotton blend yarn (I'm demonstrating YarnArt Jeans 55% cotton, 45% acrylic), 320 m / 100 g; 3-4 mm beads; 2 mm (US 0) size needles
Thread 5 x 25 beads = 125 beads.


Cast on (preferably crochet cast on) 51 stitches.



Place bead means slide the bead along the yarn closely next to the stitch on the right needle, which has been just purled or knitted.
PB = place bead
P = purl one stitch
K = knit one stitch
()* = repeat this sequence
For the first row of the bracelet:
P, (PB, P, P)* to the last stitch


Second row - knit
K, (PB, K, K)* to the last stitch
The beads appear always on the same RS (right) side of the bracelet and in a chess-board order.



Repeat rows 1 and 2 once more, then row 1 again, for a total of 5 rows.
Cast off on the WS knitwise. Cut the yarn, leaving 8" (20 cm) for sewing.


Connect the edges with mattress stitch, weave in ends. The bracelet is ready.



You can make them wider by adding more rows (don't forget to thread the respective number of beads in the beginning). If you need your bracelet larger, increase the number of stitches (always an odd number) and calculate the number of beads you need per row: (number of stitches - 1) : 2



This post has been linked to Natural Suburbia, a place for creativity ideas