Bead Stringing

Really, the most fun about knitting with beads is all the bead stringing. I mean, who doesn't love forcing beads onto yarn in a certain pattern--having to stop and say "Wait. Where am I? How many red beads am I supposed to be doing?" and then count the whole thing over from the beginning? What's not to love about that?

Here are my beads so far, all strung (hopefully) in the proper order to make the ribbon pattern on the stocking. We'll see.

The sad thing is, I'm almost done stringing these things, but I ran out of red beads! I know! You're thinking, What? Patwoman! Why didn't you count and make sure you had enough beads in the first place before starting this project? And you'd be right. But I had some bags of red beads that, although they were opened, seemed to be full. And I had this big bag of beads that looked to have a healthy number of red beads in it.

(This is the photo I took after I took out all the red beads. As you can see, there are still many, many beads left. That blue bag, btw, has pearlized white and clear pink pony beads and the clear bag is filled with clear beads.) So I felt pretty confident I had the proper amount of beads. I was so wrong. I'm going to need another 100 red beads, at least. Before I can continue. Because the last beads you string are the first ones you knit, right?

I mean, I guess I could just pull some off, restring them in the order of the way I'll be knitting them and then just cut the yarn and string the rest of them when I get them. But that seems like an awful lot of work, doesn't it? And really, this is a Christmas stocking. So, technically, it doesn't have to be done until December 24.

I think I'll just set it aside until I can get back to Michael's.