Undulating Waves Scarf

A while back, my friend Janet, talked to me about a class she took on learning how to knit with beads.  As part of the class, she got the pattern for the Undulating Waves Scarf, yarn, beads, and instructions on how to knit with beads - stringing them and the actual knitting to keep the beads in the right location.


We had talked about this scarf off and on over the years and she never finished it.  She stated that she felt like a diabetic pricking her fingers as she tried to string the beads onto the yarn.


A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon the pattern again and thought it would be a good pattern to try to knit with strung beads instead of crocheting the beads onto a stitch - the usual way I knit with beads.


I asked Janet again what ever happened to her project and she stated that it has been in time out and was just staring at her.  She gave me the kit - yarn, beads, instructions and I decided I was going to attempt this scarf.


The yarn is Schaefer Yarn Company's Susan in the Empress Wu color way.  

The beads are 6/0 seed beads that are a light blue color which seems to match the yarn color.  I frogged what Janet had knit and strung the rest of the beads onto the yarn - it was a bit tedious but the beads seemed to go on without too much trouble.

I then started knitting the scarf on US 6 (4 mm) needles and it seems to knit up pretty well.  I also created a spreadsheet for the row counts and highlighted the notes for where the beads should be while knitting each stitch.


Here is the scarf so far with three repeats of the pattern.

It is fiddly to have to move the beads down the yarn and after each repeat, I need to push the beads down the yarn.  It does break up the knitting so that might be helpful.


So far, I think I prefer the crochet method of adding beads although the look of the beads moving freely is a cool effect.  

I'm not sure how the scarf will be when it is done as the beads add quite a bit of weight to the yarn.