Adding Beads to Knitting

Don’t be afraid to add beads to your knitted project. If you want to try beads . . do it! Go to Walmart. Get some inexpensive beads, knit up a swatch with leftover yarn and use that for practicing beads.

There are many great videos online about adding beads to knitting. Here’s a good article from Knitty.

The Walmart beads sometimes aren’t uniform (so I’ve been told). Hobby Lobby has beads. I’ve only used beads that I’ve ordered from bead stores (Fox Den Beads, Fire Mountain Gems, Caravan Beads to name a few).

To me, the sizing of beads is backwards. Size 6 is bigger than size 8. I use size mostly for laceweight and size 6 for fingering weight.

Buying the beads is the easy part .. putting them on . . can be easy depending on the tool. For any of these methods, there are You Tube videos available.

The way I learned to put beads on the yarn is with dental floss using Oral B Super Floss. This method works easily when you have a few beads to put on and it’s a great way to learn. The floss is available everywhere – grocery stores, Walmart, etc.

Another method is a tiny little crochet hook. The size hook that will work will depend on the yarn and the bead. Obviously, the hook has to be small enough to fit through the hole in the bead but it has to be large enough to get the yarn through the hole in the bead. I would recommend starting with the #10/1.3 mm for size 6 beads on fingering weight yarn.

The Fleagle Beader is my favorite when using size 6 beads. I use the 1.3 mm size but, for size 8 beads, I use the 1.0 mm and I don’t do as well with that as I do with the 1.3 and size 6 beads. The beauty of this is that you can load this up with a dozen or more beads and not have to pick up individual beads each time you need them.

Here’s my crazy story:

I was making the test knit which used over 1,100 beads. I started out using dental floss and realized it was going to take forever. I switched to the Fleagle Beader and things were going great til . . I lost it. Totally . . sitting in my chair . . and lost it. Spent about an hour looking for it and found it. I usually stick it in a skein of yarn next to my chair. Was happy to find it. Knitted some more. Got up and lost the darned thing again and never did find it. I used several different methods for adding the beads but it wasn’t pleasant.

Before I ever finished the shawl, I stopped and ordered three more Fleagle Beaders in size 1.3 mm.

Experiment. Figure out which method is best for you. None of the beaders are expensive to buy. The dental floss is easy to get locally for everyone and is probably my favorite method when there are just a few beads. With more beads, it’s the Fleagle Beader.