Tourmaline

Close fitting, heavily beaded cardigan, featured on the front cover of The Knitter, Issue 94, has fairly simple lace stitch pattern and stocking stitch, but do take care with Milanese stitch. The lace is worked on all rows which makes it a little tricky to unpick a mistake - if in doubt, insert a “lifeline” every so often just in case you need to take the work back. Two beading methods are used here, the first – only at the cast on edge of the peplum and the cuffs – calls for the beads to be threaded onto the yarn before starting to knit and the second uses a very fine crotchet hook to pull a stitch through the bead. Both methods are described by Rosee Woodland in her article “Adding Beads to Your Knitting” (http://www.theknitter.co.uk/tag/addingbeadswithacrochet_hook/) .

Artesano Alpaca Silk Lace, used here, is now discontinued. Substitute with a high silk content (30%) to give the strength required to support the beads such as the yarn suggested here. For others, see www.yarnsub.com.