13 May 2013 - Casting on with some relatively smooth sock yarn using long tail. Didn’t make the tail long enough and instead of knitting plain for a few rows ended up doing 30 YO throughout the first round to get it up to 156 sts. I’m glad I invested in some Knitters’ Pride needles for this, because it’s so slippery I don’t know if I would have survived using Addi Turbos, and we all know how much I love slippery needles. Using stitch markers after every round to make counting easier.

14 May 2013 - Finally finished the first beaded row this morning. I don’t have a crochet hook, so I’m using a folded piece of beading wire. Inserting each bead doesn’t seem to take long, but setting down and picking up the extra tools and picking up the yarn to knit the next couple of stitches before repeating the process is taking forever. 24 beads inserted, ~270 to go. At least the plain knit and purl rounds and simple lace rounds are going quickly.

22 May 2013 - The binding off took forever, especially at the beginning, but after I got used to it and settled in with some Mad Men it went much faster. I’ll have to remember to go a little loose on the next one I make (I have several skeins of Aloft and plan to make these as gifts for several occasions) since I had nearly 1/10 of the skein left when I finished. Overall, I’m happy. I’ll reserve final judgement for when it’s blocked, but the yarn didn’t seem to shed too much and it’s certainly fluffy.

Removing the cast on wasn’t terrible. I simply snipped the waste yarn stitches carefully with my weapon of choice (cuticle scissors, since the curve helps pick up and separate individual stitches) after picking up all the stitches on a small set of Addi Turbos (US 1, I think).