Uuggghhh errrggghh unnnngghhh.
I am making Ice Queen, from the Knitty winter issue. I have been planning this for a few weeks now -- bought the yarn on Ebay when I couldn't find it locally, figured out which provisional cast-on I wanted to use, learned how to add beads to knitting. My yarn arrived last night and I worked it up to the first beaded row. Oooh! Aaah! Mohair and silk! A pearly cloud of deliciousness knitted with my own hands! This morning I bought beads and came home all atwitter, planning to work the beaded row in between getting some work done during Pete's nap.
Uuuuuuuggghh.
I was putting on tiny, tiny beads, smaller than the ones recommended. Sometimes they would slide right on, and sometimes I would have to wrestle them on. About the twelfth time I went to string a bead, it got really stuck. I tried to ease it back up off the wire...
...and my yarn loop broke. A loop from the left needle, in case that's not clear. A loop that had to be fixed pronto, but how??
Have you ever tried to tie a tiny invisible square knot in laceweight mohair? I recommend it as a strategy for those with low blood pressure. Or those striving for zen-like calm in the face of frustration. OH MY GOODNESS I was grumpy.
I went upstairs to grab a crochet hook, thinking I could hold one side of my sad pitiful broken loop with needle-nose pliers and perhaps hook the other side from underneath. (No, I don't really think it would have worked. It was a ploy born of desperation and unwillingness to be in the same room with that stupid broken loop for one minute longer.) On my sewing table was...our hero, Fabric Glue! I put a little dab on each side, rubbed the ends together, and dashed off the first few paragraphs of this post. It seems to be sticking. Cross your fingers.
I am taking this as a cue to switch to the slightly larger beads I bought this morning, bidding a scornful adieu to the itsy bitsy ones. (Pete put the tube under the couch before he went to sleep, telling me they were food for the animals. (What animals are under my couch? It's a mystery to me too.) Perhaps that's a good place for the stupid things.) If anyone ever comments that the first eleven beads on this thing are smaller than all the others, I will hand him the wire I'm using for stringing and tell him where he can put it.
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