Knotted and Macrame Necklace: $6 Bead Challenge

Knot working right

It's one of those days. 

Great ideas but nothing seems to be coming out exactly right. But there's enough bright spots to put them out there while I'm doing some re-work on the details.

One thing I especially like is this accent on the macrame bracelet. It's brick stitch with 15/0 beads on the macrame cord.

Both projects today involve knotting - one is traditional knots as spacers as in this necklace and the slightly more complex macrame square knot.

I'm not very proficient with stringing, so a simple knotted necklace is going out on a limb for me.

The knotting is easy - the pattern is a struggle. I went with two different patterns in one necklace, which may be getting a little two fancy.  First is the pattern above - blocks of 3, slightly asymmetrical.

Then there is an equal length of the necklace that is like the pattern above, 3 blue then a different color.

Making the complete necklace look like above.  Which might be a little confusing - when seen as a whole - but when you are wearing it you would likely see one half or the other like in the first two pictures.

In any event, I'll probably make some more changes and decide on a single pattern before I call this knotted design done.

Once I started knotting, I decided to see how these beads look surrounded by a square macrame knot. And it appeals to me much more.  I like the way the black thread outlines each bead.

If you're wondering about the knotting board - it is my homemade knotting station made from a picture frame. It works great. There's a lot more room to move your hands under the cords and I find it sits on my lap or leaning against a table for an easy working position.

Here's the completed bracelet.  I messed up the closure.  I tried using a bead, but there is not enough tension in the cords in the bead hole to keep the bracelet tight enough.  I'm playing with some ideas on how to solve that - but I'll probably re-do this bracelet with a slightly different closure.

When I re-did the closure to a spring ring, I decided to add an accent to one of the beads. It is slightly off center - which I thought might add some quirky charm to the bracelet. I did it by adding brick stitch to the edges, but it was a little difficult to finish the sides since the thread is interrupted by the knot in the middle.

Here's another look at the entire bracelet.  It looks cute on - and I like the way the rectangle beads bend around my wrist.

And if you're wondering - these two projects and yesterday's ladder necklace, have almost completely used up the three strands of rectangle beads I started with.  I think I have enough for a few accent beads or earrings left.