Bead knitted or beaded knitted items are often very decorative and beautiful and there are lots of items between which you can choose to do; there are bead knitting patterns available for practically everything you can think of that can be made of fabric or yarn! Sometimes there are so many options that you feel overwhelmed and don’t even know where to start. When you’re a beginner when it comes to using bead knitting patterns there’s a big risk that you’ll start wit too big a project which you’ll eventually realize that you won’t finish because it was too complicated or time demanding.
A good tip is to choose a smaller item as your first project with bead knitting patterns. Maybe you’re not a novice in the wide field of ordinary knitting, and then you probably have some or many already finished items. If you’ve kept the patterns for these items, you can use these again and knit the same thing all over but this second time, add some beads to the yarn. For this you don’t need a real bead knitting pattern. Doing this is very simple, for further, more thorough instructions and explanations, read the other articles on this site; for example Bead knitting and Beaded knitting.
To some people, bead or beaded knitting and knitting in general, sounds very old fashioned. They immediately think of an old lady sitting in her comfortable armchair or rocking wheel with her glasses on the tip of her nose and her lap full of knitting needles and knitting yarn. This picture couldn’t be more wrong today. Of course, knitting is a popular activity among elder women, but as you can read in Bead knitting history, the people who are bead knitting today, are actually mostly young! And when a specific group of people occupy themselves with something, they develop this activity and adjust it after their own needs and interests. Thus, among knitted or bead knitted things today, one doesn’t primarily find kettle holders, hats and dress collars. Young people transfer the beautiful patterns created by bead knitting on modern items. You find many examples of people who use bead knitting patterns to make their own cases for their laptop, mp3 or iPod and cellphone. This is a great way to add a personal touch to the handling of these seemingly hard, cold and impersonal technical gear that we depend so much on these days! Not that you can’t make your laptop personal (much of what’s inside of it is probably made by you…) but it can still be nice to have a warm, soft case made by using bead knitting patterns to put your portable computer in.
I myself started a while ago to knit cellphone cases and give to my friends. This has become fantastically appreciated! I started with a simple bead knitting pattern for a plain rectangular piece of knitting (I think that it was originally meant for the lower part of a sweater, but in beaded knitting you can of course feel free do change a pattern according to what you need at the moment). I knitted just as big a rectangle as I needed, with the seam allowance taken into account, and then I sew it together. How simple is that? I really recommend that you try this simple item for bead knitting! Another thing that’s popular to bead knit is clothes for dolls or Barbie dolls. Bead knitted clothes are fun to do and often become very nice. When knitting for dolls you don’t get the pleasure of wearing the clothes yourself, but you will surely enjoy the happy face of the child to whom you give the doll clothes. Another advantage is that it take much less time to knit for children or dolls that to yourself…