I remember my first encounter with bead knitting patterns. I’ve always been interested in all kinds of fabric related hobbies, like beaded knitting, beaded crocheting, sewing clothes for dolls and so on. At school we learned to knit potholders and mittens and all the usual stitch works for beginners. There was no talk about bead knitting patterns, everything was learned by oral instructions in group and later more personal help in the form of the teacher coming up next to you and actually showing you how to do the next stitch when you felt lost. You had no bead knitting patterns to look at. My grandmother loves knitting too, the regular one, not so much bead knitting. She’s never used any kind of bead knitting patterns, that would really have been looked upon with surprise and probably also a lot of prejudice in her small village in the north.
An old lady using bead knitting patterns while all the others knitted by heart and adjusted the stitches directly after body parts? No, that would definitely not have been popular. And my grandmother has no interest in using bead knitting patterns to be able to create some advanced clothing. She’s perfectly happy with knitting some socks to me and my family for Christmas, and some occasional babies clothes. (Maybe she’s also secretly hoping to knit for my own babies some day…). But this wasn’t supposed to be all about my grandmother and her not using bead knitting patterns, though I like to talk about her because she’s such an amazing person and a big part of my life. I was about to tell you about when I for the first time lay my eyes on bead knitting patterns. I remember it very well. It was actually only some years ago, when I went to school and wanted to develop my hobby of bead knitting to a higher level. I needed this hobby since school created a lot of stress and I really needed a break sometimes, but I had never used bead knitting patterns. I had always wanted to bead knit some kind of top clothing, a sweater or jumper for example.
I had a very good friend at the time who once saw me free hand knitting. She simply asked “Why don’t you go get yourself some bead knitting patterns, if not, how will you know what that piece of bead knitting will look like when you’ve finished?” after school, we went to the local yarn shop and asked if they were selling bead knitting patterns. And, of course they were! I immediately bought three bead knitting patterns and went home to try them out. Since then I almost never bead knit without bead knitting patterns!