Mother of Invention

Let me start by wishing a big Happy Mother's Day to all mothers reading this. I have been much more than sufficiently honoured with a five-course brunch, a shopping trip to my favourite local Middle Eastern grocery and a bouquet of lilacs. Certainly living near kids makes being able to celebrate such days so much easier for everyone.

Lilacs are one of my favs

Now on to the knitting topic of today. Despite a request of no beads on Blue, I happened to find the perfect little beads as I cleaned this spring. They are tonal colours of gray and so small they will hardly be seen yet add a helpful bit of weight at the bottom the shawl which will improve its overall shape.

The pen gives you a sense of the beads' size

They will be added only at the points of double decreases which means beads will be added to a total of five rows on the last two charts. This afternoon as I worked my way out of a food overload stooper, it seemed like a good time to start adding beads. The small (.65 mm) crochet hook used for just this purpose was located only to find it was too big for these tiny beads. So another approach had to be found. I remembered someone had mentioned that a plastic dental floss threader can be used to accomplish the same task. So a threader was found, the internet helped show me how to use it and voila, beads have been added. In fact, truth be known, I like this method better than using a crochet hook because the hook can sometimes split yarn as it is pulled through the bead. Had I not had this problem an opportunity for improved beading might have been lost.

The threader and how it is used to wrap the bead through a stitch

The beads are in there, just above each of the arrows

On this Mother's Day an alternate technique to a knitting dynamic caused me to become a Mother of Invention leading to something new and a better skill. Necessity was indeed the Mother of this change.

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