Project-a-month resolution: February

Only two months in, and already the challenge has gone off piste somewhat. Lately I haven't been working on a neglected project, but a new one that needed to be completed in time for a birthday.

I started out wanting to do some beaded knitting, but I couldn’t find a pattern that seemed right, so I ended up inventing my own pattern for a crocheted scarf instead. The first step was to string quite a lot of beads onto the yarn. This was a no-brainer task for craft night, when I tend to be too distracted by alcohol, friends and funny stories to be able to concentrate on anything complicated.


(I was thinking while stringing hundreds of beads that it would be very helpful if yarn came pre-beaded. I've since found out that it does – Artyarns Beaded Silk Yarn is one brand, and jolly lovely it looks too.)

Although beaded crochet isn’t difficult as such, it’s slow. I've never done it before, and it seemed to involve a lot of pushing beads down the yarn to get them out of the way when I didn’t need them, and an equal amount of pushing them back up the yarn when I did, and not much actual crocheting.

Every second stitch on every second row has a bead added to it. The base fabric is
double crochet (or single crochet if you're North American.)

Things started to speed up when I got to the unbeaded lace part, though, which was encouraging. I chose a fairly heavyweight lace pattern so that it wouldn’t be distorted by the weight of the beaded ends. It’s a four-row pattern (called shell or fan, depending on which source you use) that’s pretty easy to remember.

The edges were a bit ragged, so I tidied them up with a row of double crochet. 

I also put some scalloping on the ends, which were looking a bit naked and wrong. 

I finished the scarf with about 30 cm of yarn to spare – lucky! I probably should have blocked it properly, but as I only finished it at 10 pm the night before it had to go in the mail, it wouldn’t have dried in time. Instead, I steam-blocked it with the iron.

And here it is, before being sent to its new home in Melbourne. Happy birthday, Louise!