As best as I can remember, this is the first time I have knit with beads. This is certainly the first time I have tried the crochet hook method of adding the beads to knitting. NauticalKnitter has an excellent video on her website illustrating the technique. You don’t have to count out and thread all the beads for your project onto your yarn before you begin working! My mom kept looking at my work last week and searching my thread cone to see where I had hidden the beads.

The technique is simple and elegant. As you come up to a stitch requiring a bead, you place a bead on a very fine steel crochet hook. You then hook the stitch needing the bead off the left needle, pull the loop on the crochet hook through the bead and then replace the stitch onto the left needle ready to be knit (or purled) into as the pattern dictates. Now that I have tried this I really don’t know why you would do it any other way (unless of course you don’t have a fine steel crochet hook). The beads sit so nicely over both legs of the stitch this way, no more fussing about what part of the loop the bead should sit on.

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