Beginning of notes
1/19/10 - Expect to cast on Jan 20th. Have to finish Bocage Test knit first.
1/20/10 - cast on tonight and got through round 2 (or 4?) of the strawberry section. Would have gotten farther but had an extra YO and had to figure out what happened, which involved tinking back. It’s late, and shit has happened, so I’m not going to pick this back up until tomorrow, when I have a brain again.
1/20/10 - Having to tink back quite a bit in the first 50 rows of this thing, but I think I’m getting the hang of it. Finished row 38 today (first repeat of bleeding heart pattern) and I’ll pick it up tomorrow. Hoping to get to about row 50 tomorrow.
1/21/10 - Got in 9 rows tonight, so when I pick it back up tomorrow I’ll be on the last row of the Bleeding heart pattern, or row 48 overall.
1/23/10 - Finished row 13 on the Madeira pattern. No issues so far. Hope to start stringing beads this week, depending on how much progress I can make through the madiera section.
1/24/10 - Finished Madeira section, midway through row 97. 4.5 rows to go before the beading starts! I’ll be stringing beads tomorrow.
1/25/10 - O.M.G. Stringing the beads took 3 hours! what the crap! So I finally got all but about 100 beads on there. Of course, I probably have 30 or so on the floor from them flying around in the bead spinner. Tomorrow, I try to figure out how to move the beads around and knit.
1/26/10 - Stringing all the beads at once was a colossally stupid ass idea. All told, it’s about 30+ feet worth of beads, and moving them is a two hour job. Seriously, the dumbest f!&$ing thing I’ve ever gotten it in to my head to do. For the love of all that is holy, do not make this mistake. I actually separated out a quarter of the beads, snipped the yarn and tied off that end so they wouldn’t spill, and wrapped the excess three quarters worth of beads around the outside. leaving around 1200 beads on my “working yarn”, which I’ll do a russian join to the center of the yarn cake and just move those as necessary. Only got through row 102 tonight. I’m using Eurekas brilliant idea for bead randomization, which is to use a deck of cards to tell you where to put the beads.
1/27/10 - Made it through three rows of the beading. Switched from playing cards for bead placement to Uno cards, and only using cards numbered 1-7. Anything else is just too far separated in my opinion.
1/28/10 - Midway through row 109. Seems to be taking about an hour per row since I started the netting section. Progress is slow, but steady, and I’m enjoying it. Every few hours (or few rows) I have to move the beads down the yarn, and that takes about 10-15 minutes. Overall, I’m happy with the pace of the project, though I’d love for it to go a little faster. :)
1/30/10 - finished row 117 and am on size 9 needles now. I’ve made a couple of errors but hopefully they won’t be glaringly obvious in the finished product. I’m thinking this thing is going to take about a month to finish. LOTS of yo, k2tog’s.
1/31/10 - finished row 120.
2/1/10 - finished row 126.
2/2/10 - finished row 130
2/3/10 - finished row 132. I wish there was interesting stuff to say, but there isn’t. Just lots and lots of the same. I’m officially halfway through the netting but not halfway through my beads (but close). I’m putting no more than 5 stitches between the beads now to try to use them all up.
2/4/10 - halfway through row 135. I need to finish at least 4 rows per day to have this done by next weekend.
2/5/10 - finished row 138
2/6/10 - finished row 144. 13 more pattern rows + the final increase row then bindoff. Still hoping to finish this by next weekend.
2/7/10 - finished row 150. 8 rows + bindoff remaining.
2/8/10 - Bound off! Thanks to a snow day I whipped through rows 151-155, at which point I ran out of beads. Skipped rows 156 & 157 and did the increase row then began binding off stitches. Took 3+ hours to bind off (K2, sl both to left needle, then K2TOG through back loop), but it’s done! Pre-block size is 18” center medallion and 39” including netting. Soaking now for a good blocking.

Blocked, and inside pics taken (better ones to be posted this weekend). The yarn was perfect! I was afraid the variegation would be obvious, but it really isn’t and in fact lends a nice subtlety to it that I adore. In fact, I adore everything about this piece (aside from moving the beads around, which is totally worth it in the end) and cannot thank Claudia enough for her overly generous gift. I’m not certain where I’ll wear this yet, but it will be a well-loved item.

Because a couple of people have asked, I used the Amethyst Mega Mix beads in size 8/0 from Kentobead on ebay.

Some resources that were helpful to me: MadAboutEwe’s instructions for how to move the stitchmarkers.

I do know that rounds 30/31 don’t allow the leaves to line up correctly, I used THIS tutorial to get those lined up.

I also explained my process for moving the beads HERE.