Beading Madness

Adding beads to my knitting is a relatively new skill for me.  Last year, I took an Advanced Lace with Beads class at Vogue Knitting Live with a fabulous designer, Laura Nelkin.  She gave very detailed instructions with helpful tips and tricks for both methods of beading, and by the end of the class I had a firm grasp on the techniques.  I even had a darling (though imperfect) little swatch:

This swatch used both techniques for beading: pre-strung and placed.  For the pre-strung, we used beading needles.  Actually, we used something cheaper and easier to find: floss threaders.

A great tutorial for using floss threaders to string beads onto yarn can be found here.  The same tutorial also explains how to use regular old thread or a yarn needle, but I like the floss threaders because they can take even the smallest beads.  Basically, all you have to do is put a few inches of your yarn through the big loop in the threader, then slide beads down the threader and onto the yarn.  For one of my latest projects, an Entomology Shawl, I had to pre-string more than 1200 beads. At least it turned out beautifully:

Each technique has their own advantages.  For pre-stringing, the majority of the work happens up front: you can't start knitting until you've strung as many beads as you're going to need for that ball of yarn.  But then, you just knit along without having to stop.  For placing beads, you have to stop knitting each time you need to bead, but you don't have all those beads adding weight or wearing down your yarn as you knit.  Pre-strung beads can float along the yarn in your work and more than one bead can be put on a single stitch or yarnover.  Placed beads stay put where you tell them to.  Pre-strung beads can have a smaller opening and accommodate thicker yarn because only one strand of yarn has to fit through the bead.  When you place a bead, both legs of a stitch have to go through it. Finally, though this isn't really an advantage or disadvantage, the two techniques look slightly different because pre-strung beads have the hole going horizontally in the work and placed beads have the hole going up and down.  

If I had to choose one technique and stick to it my entire life, I would go pre-strung.  I like being able to focus on the knitting and have the beads be a perk of the project rather than feel like my time is split throughout the project between knitting and beading.  But each pattern will be different, and I think the placed method is more common.  My Refreeze pattern happens to use a crochet hook to place the beads.  The Jeweled Cowl is another great example.  It's easier, I think, to conceptualize and design a pattern that places the beads while you go rather than pre-stringing.  As to which one is easier to knit, well, try them both and decide for yourself!