My Own Beaded Stitch Markers!

Whooo Hoo! Here are my stitch markers. I am so proud of them that I can bust! I want to thank David Reidy at the Sticks and String podcast for demonstrating how easy they are to make. I didn’t make mine the same way as his because I found these 20mm toggle clasps…. but also because I am not fluent in “binary”. I used the ring part for my markers. There is nothing there to catch on yarn, except for maybe any shoddiness in my own work. For my first try, I think I did pretty good. As you can see, these are sitting on US 11 needles with room to spare. The 11’s are the largest ones I have right now. If you look close, you can see that on one of them I cut off too much wire and had to remove one of the beads on top… no biggie… but I KNOW!

I used Regal Beading Guild’s Peridot Flower Lampwork Glass Beads, #62866. The size is not noted on the package, sorry. I don’t know the name of the wire piece, but it had a little doo-dad at the bottom to stop the bead and was a little decorative. The company is called “Bead It”, but I would not recommend it because quite a few pieces in the package were not properly made and as a result, the whole linear effect is off. I could have made more, but because the other wire pieces were so crappy, I had to stop. Well, I got my .99 cents worth. The other beads are just misc. glass beads. Finding the 20mm toggle clasp part was really a lucky break for me as I had no idea what I was looking at. I used a 50% off coupon at A.C. Moore for my beading tools, a set of 3 pliers, pretty basic, but just enough for what I needed. A $12.00 set of three cost me 6 bucks… a really great deal considering I saw tools that ran at least $12-14 for a single tool.

Ah, I am so relieved now. I basically got started on this because I want to start my very first summer top and the pattern says I need stitch markers. My mouth is watering for me to make a real garment for myself. I mean, the scarves, mittens, and even the poncho is real enough, but a S-w-e-a-t-e-r ! Now, that would really be an accomplishment. I’ll let you guys know is going on with that, but I’ve got to get going because I still need to fix some rows on the poncho. I find that I am missing some crochet stitches at the end of my rows. I looked at it and there is a definite decrease going on there…. I have no idea why. Do I need to make two crochets in the last stitch of each row? That is what it’s looking like to me, so I’ve got to go back and fix it all.